Before summer, the Puig de les Basses penitentiary center in Figueres will have the first unit specialized in the care of prisoners with mental health pathologies. It will have capacity for around twenty inmates and after its launch, the model will be deployed to five other Catalan penitentiary centers in the medium term.
The unit will be located in the former psychiatric ward, built in 2014, and empty since then. The provision of space in prisons for people with mental health problems was a historic demand.
The Department of Health and Justice will staff a space in which around thirty professionals from the fields of health, social education, psychology, social work and the judicial field will work. It will also have sports and artistic technicians, and intercultural mediators.
During the first half of this year, this first unit will come into operation, which will function as a pilot test. In the medium term, the model will be reproduced in the Mas Enric, Lledoners, Joves, Brians 1 penitentiary centers, with 12 and 20 places, and Brians 2, with 60.
The president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonés, visited today the Puig de les Basses penitentiary center where the first of these units will come into operation. Aragonés explained that this resource should help “facilitate reintegration” and “improve the emotional and social climate of the centers.”
“The fact of being able to have more resources and offer specialized and more individualized care is positive for the person who will be a beneficiary within the center, but also for the rest of society,” said Aragonés. It is estimated that the percentage of inmates with mental health problems is five times that of the rest of the population.
