Vitoria (EFE).- The Ararteko has asked the Basque Government to create modules for first degree prisoners, where the dangerous ones are interned.
The reason is that the three Basque prisons lack closed regime modules for these inmates.
For this reason they are transferred to prisons outside the Basque Country, which “harms their reintegration”.
The Ararteko institution, a position held by Manuel Lezartua, has issued a resolution on the complaint of a first degree prisoner.
After participating in a fight in the Biscayan Basauri prison, he was returned to the first degree prison, the toughest, and transferred first to Zaballa (Álava), and then to Dueñas (Palencia).
This inmate was the “protagonist” of a massive fight in the Basauri prison in July of last year, in which all the service officials had to intervene to appease him.
He was isolated, the Basauri Treatment Board unanimously proposed his regression to first grade and he was transferred to Zaballa.
Upon arriving at the Álava prison, he resisted being searched, struggled with officials and was handcuffed.
The prisoner sent several letters to the prison surveillance court to denounce the “abuses and assaults” suffered in Zaballa.
Then he retracted and asked that his complaints not be transferred to the Court.
First degree prisoners, transferred out of the Basque Country
Finally, on August 30, he filed a complaint with the Ararteko and on September 1 he was transferred to the La Moraleja-Dueñas prison in Palencia, after being approved for a pass to first grade that had been proposed from Basauri.
The Ararteko has not appreciated irregularities in the use of coercive means (handcuffs) by Zaballa’s staff.
Nor does it question the regression to the first grade of the inmate.
But he points out that the three Basque prisons do not have closed-regime modules, where first-degree inmates are serving their sentence.
Within the transfer to Euskadi of the jurisdiction over prisons, signed in 2021, collaboration with the State is contemplated for the transfer of these inmates to prisons outside the community.
Zaballa prison in Alava. EFE/David Aguilar
According to Ararteko, for the Basque prison administration this collaboration is “essential”
“It allows access to a broader network of penitentiary establishments that makes it possible to cover the needs that the penitentiary population presents in Euskadi.”
“In view of the means that the regional administration currently has, otherwise it would not be possible.”
But remember that the Law “establishes that efforts will be made to ensure that in each territorial area there is a sufficient number of penitentiary establishments to cover the needs.”
For this reason, “one should try to avoid proceeding systematically to the transfer outside the Basque Country of those people who, classified in the first degree, cannot serve a sentence in centers in the Basque Country.”
Difficulties creating a module
The Ararteko has admitted that the closed regime “presents obstacles for its implementation” in Euskadi.
For example, the difficulty in establishing a specialized technical team in a first grade department.
Above all, he adds, because “there is an insufficiency of professional and qualified personnel in the Basque Prison Administration.”
Also an overload of work of the existing troops.
For this reason, it recommends that the Basque Government assess the need to create a first degree regime in Community prisons.
It should be oriented towards reinsertion, “as befits a comprehensive prison administration.”
The argument that he gives is that serving a sentence outside the Basque Country “can promote uprooting and harm the person’s social reintegration, by removing them from the environment to which they will return in freedom.”
Thus, the Ararteko has concluded that transfers outside the Basque Country must be “exceptional”.
They should respond to the maladjustment or individualized needs of the person, “and not so much to the non-existence of resources in terms of classification of the Basque Penitentiary Administration”. EFE