The day to day in a saturated prison: "There is tension even to queue for breakfast"

BarcelonaPrisons are resorting to all options available to accommodate more than 9,500 inmates, a figure that accounts for 95% of the system's total capacity. Saturation in many modules affects the day-to-day life of prisoners and staff, and the prison sources consulted by ARA agree that having more people in the same space encourages more tensions and conflicts. "There end up being more tense situations over things you wouldn't even think about outside of a prison. For having to queue for breakfast, because someone else finished the milk... When there are many, small tensions are harder to see and can trigger incidents," a prison educator explains to ARA. "There is more movement, more cunning, and the ratio of professionals remains the same," she adds.

Another prison system worker, a surveillance officer, assesses that the fact that the modules are at their limit makes the work more complex and makes it harder to avoid possible tensions. "The margin of free spaces is very small, and in the end, prisoners for different crimes and of different religions end up having to be mixed in a single cell," this worker asserts. Prison sources explain that even the modules that are most full must have a couple of empty cells for security, and furthermore, there are inmates who, due to medical orders regarding mental health, must live alone.

The coordinator of the Prisons section of the IAC-CATAC union, Carles Membrado, adds that it must be taken into account that the places available in the workshops, school, and courses that inmates can take are limited. "When they are full, the excess goes to the yard, and the yards are leisure spaces, not educational ones," and for this reason, he demands reinforcing the staff. Membrado explains that at the Wad-Ras women's prison, where there are also trans prisoners who normally do not share a cell with the rest of the prisoners, the lack of space has meant that in some cases they have slept in the same cell.

Equipment that must alleviate this situation is the new open center in the Zona Franca in Barcelona for inmates in semi-liberty, which was supposed to open this month, but is now expected for January, four months later, with 400 initial places that will be progressively expanded to 800. In addition, the Generalitat has announced that it will install two more modules within the perimeter of Mas d'Enric, which will be ready in 2028, although the Department of Justice is already considering installing more to cover the increase in the prison population.

Sanctions and "credibility"

As ARA already explained, one of the places where the lack of space is most noticeable is the special closed regime departments (DERT), intended for inmates in the first grade – the strictest – or those who are in isolation due to some sanction. The fact that there are more incidents also implies more sanctioned inmates. Several sources have explained to this newspaper that some centers are placing sanctioned prisoners in the infirmary or the admission module due to a lack of space in the DERT. In other cases, isolations are carried out in the usual modules "so as not to saturate the DERT," assures another source. From the UGT Prisons union, Montse Balaguer warns that this can leave some sanctions half-fulfilled and could lead to a loss of authority for officials. "If a sanction for stealing a mobile phone is fourteen days, you cannot leave it at seven because you lose credibility," asserts the spokesperson for the majority union in the sector.

In fact, penitentiary sources agree that there are also more files for incidents and that lately more drugs and mobile phones are also being detected among prisoners. Balaguer assesses that following the union agreement after the murder of the cook Núria López at Mas d'Enric in 2024, measures were taken such as installing body scanners to detect prohibited items in prison, as well as drone jammers to prevent them from being a means of bringing drugs and mobile phones into the facility. This has led to more of these situations being detected and, therefore, more sanctioned inmates, but Balaguer warns: "If afterwards the sanction remains half-finished and you return to the module because there is no space to complete it, it is useless. You don't need to be more authoritarian, but you do need to comply, not give in".