Laura Rodriguez White
Barcelona (EFE).- The covid pandemic has aggravated mental health problems in Catalan prisons, with 40% of prisoners with psychological disorders and the highest number of suicides since statistics exist, to the point of becoming the leading cause of death in prisons in 2022.
According to data from the Department of Justice, last year there were 14 suicides out of the 39 deaths that occurred in Catalan prisons, while in 2019, before the pandemic, there were 28 deaths in the custody of the prison administration, of which seven were they had taken their lives.
This is a trend that has been on the rise since Justice has published death statistics, reaching the highest number collected in 2022.
From this department they attribute this increase to “the pandemic and the situations of extraordinary confinement that have been experienced in prisons”, as well as “the increase in hopelessness in the post-pandemic”, according to a spokeswoman for the ministry.
For his part, José Navarro, spokesman for the association for monitoring the penal system OBSERVA, considers that “these people are under the effective protection of the State, and when the suicide figures go up, something is undoubtedly wrong.”
In statements to EFE, Navarro has indicated that this is due to various factors, “from the presence of people with mental illnesses who should not be under such a disciplinary regime, going through the same prison environment, characterized by violence and tension.”
During the confinement, the fact was added that “many people deprived of liberty saw their permits, scheduled departures and grade progressions delayed, in short, their
right to reinsertion”, according to OBSERVA.
A study by the Department itself and the Justícia i Pau Association points out that this phenomenon is due “to the high presence of people with suffering and problems related to mental health in prisons, a prevalence up to seven times higher than in the whole of the population”.
Anxiety, the main mental health problem
Figures from that same study reveal that around 40% of the prison population suffers from some type of mental disorder. Anxiety is the most present problem in prisons, which in 2022 suffered from 39.62% of inmates.
This is a very high figure compared to the general population, in which this percentage is 17.97%, according to the Catalan Health Institute.
From OBSERVA they have recognized that in many cases it is a part of the population with previous health problems, which “added to unfavorable contexts end up committing crimes and occupying positions in the judicial and penitentiary system, instead of being welcomed and treated in a manner therapeutic”, says Navarro.
However, they denounce that the administration’s response to manifestations of this problem, such as self-harm or conflicts between inmates, “in most cases is isolation, mechanical restraint, disciplinary sanctions and the regression of these people to life regimes in first grade”.
These sanctions can “worse suffering and mental disorders”, according to the report ‘Mental health in the Catalan prison system’, which points out that “it is precisely in inmates subjected to these regimes where a higher rate has been detected. of suicides”.
A suicide prevention plan
Last December, the Minister of Justice, Gemma Ubasart, announced that they had signed an agreement with the Department of Health to prevent suicides and improve intervention in isolation units, as well as that they would abolish the method of mechanical restraint, which had been recovered by its predecessor, Lourdes Ciuró from JxCat.
From the Ministry of Justice they assure that they are working “on a package of extraordinary measures to attack this problem” that they still cannot specify. The Department points to the pandemic and confinement as one of the main causes of the increase in suicides.
In a statement, OBSERVA indicated that in this situation “other measures that are already contemplated in the legal system should be applied, such as suspensions of sentences for mental illness and the referral of these people to social and health resources outside the prison system.”
In addition, from this association they call attention to the 127 deaths that have occurred in recent years in prisons and whose motive is undetermined under the category of “pending etiology” and demand “the right of families to know the cause of the death of your loved one.”
