Redux
Every journey circles home
The most disturbing news you can read in Cyprus today is about the situation inside the Central Prisons. ‘Disturbing’ barely scratches the surface, to me it is horror-level disturbing. It is disturbing when you read about the mass rape of a 19-year-old. Disturbing when you read about rape inflicted to the point of permanent physical damage. Disturbing when you read about inmates taking their own lives. About deaths from beatings, prisoners murdering foreign inmates, and rapists being left free to escape. About mafia style executions outside being coordinated from inside. About criminal investigations against guards, corruption, connections, and the never-ending flow of contraband. And the list goes on, day after day. And yet, the only officials who ever seem to resign, get reshuffled, or take political responsibility, are the ones connected to justice, as if the rest of the system has nothing to answer for.
What is even more disturbing is that this place, in a small European country of around a million people, cannot operate anywhere near the standards of a country like Luxembourg. Instead, the conditions reported resemble those in Russia or Venezuela.
And yes, perhaps a bit ironically, in Cyprus they do not imprison journalists yet, but who knows. The direction of things does not inspire confidence. Everytime I read a disturbing story coming from Cyprus' prisons I ask the same question: Why? How can a country this small, is not manageable? Why does Cyprus fail for so many years to keep a single prison safe?
The truth is that prisons around the world become the worst places for humans for the same reasons, and it seems that Cyprus has them all. Overcrowding comes first, the slow suffocation of a system that is expected to hold double or triple its capacity until everything collapses: safety, hygiene, mental health, supervision, medical care. Then comes understaffing, which leads to neglect, when too few guards are left to manage too many people, opening the door to gangs, violence, intimidation and corruption. Corruption: smuggling, favours, informal power structures, deals in the shadows. A lack of transparency and abuses multiply when no one is watching. A chaotic infrastructure does the rest, old, decaying buildings becoming unsafe for everyone. And political pressure ensures that when institutions are weak, problems stay hidden, at least long enough for more damage to be done.
But there is one thing that they all have in common: it is a low, low state priority. This is the root cause almost everywhere. And this is what explains why such a small population cannot face the problems of the poor, cannot deal with the vulnerable, cannot solve violence, cannot manage drugs, cannot maintain decent and humane conditions for patients, the elderly, the disabled.
In the end, the prison crisis is not about prisons. It is once again about the state’s deepest priorities, and right now, people are clearly not one of them.