The inquiry was announced by the Home Affairs Ministry earlier today after yet another suicide attempt by an inmate, a 30-year-old man.  

Only a month ago, a woman died following a suicide attempt. She was known to have a drug problem and was serving a two-year jail term. She was the twelfth prisoner to have died during the last three years. 

The inquiry has been appointed to scrutinise the prison’s procedures when it came to assessing inmates’ mental health and their wellbeing throughout their stay at the facility, analyse procedures in place for prisoners returning to the facility after being treated at the Mount Carmel mental health hospital, scrutinise procedures followed by the prison when it comes to the rehabilitation of inmates and to study suicide prevention measures adopted by the prison.

Moviment Graffitti warned that “such so-called independent inquiries” were in actual fact controlled by government and had a history of leading to insignificant conclusions and recommendations that only serve as a “smokescreen to wrongdoing” and which “totally fail to address structural issues”. 

It also called for members of civil society to be included on the inquiry board in order to safeguard and ensure its impartiality. 

“The negligence and outright maliciousness displayed by prison director Alex Dalli has led, and continues to lead to, loss of life,” the group said. 

Minister has lost all political credibility

Presenter and University of Malta Faculty of Social Wellbeing Dean Andrew Azzopardi, who follows the issues with Malta’s prison system closely, has similarly called for the inquiry to investigate the prison system as a whole. 

He has also insisted that Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri given that his defence of the situation had made him a part of the system that needs to be investigated. 

“The minister no longer has the moral grounds to speak about prison because he always aligned himself with all the decisions being taken,” Azzopardi said during a short interview on NET TV. “He is now part of the investigation. He is now a subject of the investigation. This is serious.” 

Azzopardi stressed the fact that Camilleri had always stuck his neck out for, and defended the prison’s administration. “He needs to go now,” Azzopardi said. 

In addition to Camilleri’s resignation, Azzopardi insisted that for the inquiry to be credible, the prison director also needed to step aside and an interim director appointed, for the board to have the liberty to investigate all that needs to be investigated.  

The Nationalist Party has also called for Camilleri to step down in light of the latest development.

“Byron Camilleri chooses to defend what is wrong, and if he is not capable, or lacks the moral authority to remove the prison director – who has manifestly taken the correctional facility down a dangerous road – then the minister’s position is no longer tenable,” Home Affairs spokesperson Beppe Fenech Adami said.

He also called into question the composition of the inquiry board which he argued “defied logic”.

Fenech Adami stressed it was not acceptable for a member of the prison’s governance board to resign just before being appointed to the board essentially investigating governance at the prison.

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