The management team of the Ponent penitentiary center, in Lleida, has removed prisoners convicted of homicide or various blood crimes from the kitchen, following the murder of a cook at the Mas d’Enric prison, in El Catllar (Tarragona). ), at the hands of an inmate who later committed suicide.
Specifically, five prisoners have been transferred from the kitchen of the Ponent prison, where they carried out their training and rehabilitation until now, to other workshops in the center, as reported this Tuesday by the Efe agency citing sources from the Justice Department of the Generalitat.
In any case, these are changes that the Ponent prison management has taken on its own initiative, and that do not obey any directive issued by the Department of Justice.
In the Lledoners prison, in Sant Joan de Villatorrada (Barcelona), three inmates will change their training location, who will also leave the kitchen, but in this last case for reasons unrelated to security or related to the murder of the Mas worker d’Enric.
In the case of Lledoners, Justícia specifies, these are “natural changes.” Sources from the Department of Justice emphasize that in the current context the “priority” is to “reinforce security” and the “perception of security”, both of the inmate population and of the workers themselves.
Therefore, if a director or the treatment board of a penitentiary center considers that it is “preventively necessary” to transfer inmates convicted of murder, manslaughter or other violent crimes from the kitchen to other workshops, there is no “problem” in this decision.
In fact, these changes are in line with what was announced last week by the Minister of Justice, Gemma Ubasart, that the current circular on security in Catalan prisons would be reviewed in terms of the factors that are taken into account for that inmates can work in the prison kitchen, introducing new criteria.
Prisoners convicted of crimes – whether murder or manslaughter – are not prohibited from working in the kitchens, since other criteria are taken into account such as the development, conduct and behavior of the inmate, as happened with the Mas d’Enric prisoner. , who was serving an eleven-year prison sentence for killing a prostituted woman, but who worked in the kitchen since her progress was “favorable” and she presented a “low risk of recidivism.”
