The
“catalan bag” that’s been sold at the Vinçon store in Barcelona has been made by prisoners.
Maybe it’s even the answer to why it’s having such success. Lately a campaign
has been raised in which we´re told the value of this work for the
future reintegration of the prisoner in society. Well then, here we are,
those who’re never happy, those who always look for faults, those who are
know in Vinçon to report, those who will always be wherever there’s
injustices and exploitation, to make you feel uncomfortable.
The CIRE (stands in catalan for Initiatives for Reintegration Center) is a public enterprise,
depending on the catalan Justice Department, and was raised in 1989. With
an hypocritical speech in where they talk about “freedom deprivative sentences”
not being an end in itself, but as a means and a pedagogical tool, CIRE
tries to consolidate himself as a prison labour monopoly. As it’s written
in the article # 26 of the General Organic Penitentiary Law, work is a right
and a DUTY of the prisoner. This duty opens a front as the one that’s been
working in US and UK, where at private prisons (built, managed and directed
by enterprises, that is, with the only goal of economical benefits) you’re
forced to work, risking isolation (i.e. 23 hours a day locked without any
contact with other people) if you do not do so. Taking further this comparison,
we want to mention the document “Notes about the penitentiary situation
in Catalunya” (2004), by Miquel Ballabriga, where he says: “We can´t
rule out the importation of anglo-saxon models of privatisation of the penitentiary
centres, above all if the budget shortages are persistant and the number
of prisoners raises. From the catalan civil services there have been a number
of messages in this direction –leaving aside what’s happening in the “minors
prisons”- proposing the replacement of catalan police for private security
guards”.
Those prisons for minors depend from regional governments,
but are managed privately. The new set of rules about minors, approved July
2004 and to be applied after March 2005, is just a copy and even a strengthening
of the “adults” Penitentiary Regulations: contravening UN norms that forbid
isolation as well as “coercitive elements”, the security guards are carrying
firearms. Under this new regulations, telling
the family about transfers from their relatives is no more an obligation;
the minor is denied the right to have a lawyer of their choice; the transfers
to faraway places is enforced; there’s a cut off rights in visits and temporary
permissions; allows full body searchings...
Also, we have to question how mechanical and
assembly line works helps “learning a job”, when these kind of works are
exactly the ones where you don’t need any kind of learning. These prisoners
will be reintegrated into society as another of the millions of people-robots
who do works without any trace of creativity or interest in what they do
or don’t do. Another person in the no-life of capitalist system. Also, if
we look at the almost impossible task of, for example, study a career in
prison (thanks to the bureaucracy and the “good job” of jailers and crap
like them, we have the final picture of what they call “reintegration”.
Some years ago, the prisoner had the “chance” to cut their sentences if
he worked: two days less for every day he worked. In 1995, the Penal Code
was modified by Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE, now, after
8 years, back in power). The almost total extinction of penitentiary benefits
by work meant a backward movement of almost 200 years in Spanish penal codes;
even the dictatorships considered those benefits.
Maybe too hard words for the convinced democrats.
Every new Penal Code hardens sentences, creates lots of new crimes/ offences,
lengthens the maximum staying in prison… So we have not to surprise about
the prison overcrowding that are so much talked about. But there’s always
a solution, very far from the “noble aims” of reintegration: more prisoners
and more prisons, therefore more imprisoned slave workers to raise the enterprise’s
benefits. And we´re told about “democracy as the panacea”. We have
to keep in mind that since the end of Franco’s dictatorship, the number
of prisoners in Spain has multiplied per 5!!
They always hide in what the laws say and in their nice words…they don’t
have the slightest problem to say so aberrant lies as the article 3.3 of
the Penitentiary Regulations of 1996:
“…so life in prison has to have the reference of life-in-freedom, favouring
social links”. Though it’s pretty true that life-on-the-outside looks everyday
more as a prison in which we consume every garbage they think of selling
us, it’s shameful to see how they talk about “freedom-like conditions” when
in our prisons there’s torture (this fact was recently reported in the Human
Rights Comission of the EU, where Spain was the ONLY state specifically
mentioned in the report); when a “special- regime” that allows and enforces
isolation of people (FIES regime:prison inside prison); when prisoners also
face psychological tortures in hands of the “employees” (that for us are
sadist with a shitty job) that surpass the worst nightmares.
Talking again about CIRE, we have to keep in mind that this public enterprise
is the one that directly employs prisoners. The enterprises that want cheap,
easily led and docile labour force have to do so by means of CIRE. Recently,
with the change in the catalan government, they announced the creation of
a new brand “Made in CIRE”, where they are going to sell the products themselves.
A good deal, for sure, where rancid clans of catalan power are taking profits:
for instance, the ex-director was Marta Ferrussola, wife of the catalan
president that lasted for 20 years; nowadays, the chief of new projects
of CIRE is Maria Teresa Samaranch, daughter of the famous fascist Juan Antonio
Samaranch, who was later recycled into head of the Olympics international
Comitee for also over 20 years. Some other people with many things to say
in CIRE are, or were, directors of prisons (Manuel Revuelta).
In the early 90’s, 139 prisoners signed a lawsuit,
which later derived into a report, where they reclaimed their wages to compare
with the professional minimum wage: in the sentence they we’re denied this.
In 2003, some trials were carried against CIRE for individual demands (“strangely”
collective demands weren’t accepted). The system of payments, inadmissible
firings, interprofessional wages minimums, why they don’t are recognised
the 8 hour labour day (many times they work much more than that; on the
national insurance CIRE just pays for 4 hours, the rest of them are labelled
as “reintegration works”), they can’t get the dole, and not even mentioning
vacations or things like that…