26 organisations ask the Congress of Deputies to backtrack and not to approve prison officers as agents of authority.
They claim that the amendment proposed by UN Podemos and PSOE opens the door to the policeization of prison officers, as well as to an increase in arbitrariness in decisions affecting prisoners.
In a statement published this morning, a total of 27 organisations have expressed their “absolute rejection” of the amendment made by PSOE and Unidas Podemos to the gag law, which recognises prison officers as agents of authority. For this reason, the groups have registered a petition addressed to the spokespersons of the parliamentary groups that make up the Interior Commission of the Congress, in order to “stop a legislative amendment that would imply a new democratic regression“.
According to sources from the social organisations, this proposal “implies breaking with the consensus established in the General Penitentiary Law approved in 1979“. This law, as the groups explain, “represented a democratic leap forward, as it created a civilian body for the management of penitentiary centres, in contrast to what happened during the Franco regime“. In this sense, the amendment “opens the door to the policeisation of prison officers“, since, in accordance with constitutional principles, “the criteria that must guide their actions are of a treatment nature and not of a regime or public order“.
In the opinion of the groups, this reform constitutes “the abandonment of the rehabilitative paradigm that theoretically should guide the functioning of the penitentiary system“. Instead, they claim that this amendment introduces a model in which “persons deprived of their liberty may be punished for minor offences both through administrative-penitentiary channels, as well as through criminal channels, leading to an increase in the number of cases in which they are charged and convicted for attacking, resisting or disobeying authority officials“. Furthermore, this reform will also mean “an increase in the difficulties in reporting situations of mistreatment in the context of deprivation of liberty“. In this way, the presumption of truthfulness of prison officers, which the reform intends to introduce, “will act as a deterrent to filing complaints and initiating proceedings in the event of a possible counter-denunciation by the officers“. Likewise, they point out, it increases the margin of arbitrariness in sanctioning proceedings, including those that seriously affect fundamental rights, such as isolation in cells.
Social organisations have expressed their bewilderment regarding this amendment, given that this proposal is presented shortly after the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) of the Council of Europe published its report following its latest visit to Spain. With regard to the situation in prisons, the CPT has stated that “there continues to be a pattern of physical ill-treatment by prison officers as a disproportionate and punitive reaction to prisoners’ recalcitrant behaviour“. According to the CPT delegation, the complaints made by persons deprived of their liberty cannot be treated as the result of the actions of one or two officials, “but represent a deeper culture of abuse of power and impunity among certain prison officials working in these prisons”. For all these reasons, the social organisations this morning called on the parliamentary groups to reverse this reform, which would be “a step backwards in guaranteeing the rights of persons deprived of their liberty and a step forward in consolidating the culture of abuse of power and impunity denounced by the Council of Europe“.
