Crime & Justice, Europe, Headlines, Human Rights

RIGHTS-ROMANIA: Lifers Make a Bid for Attention

Claudia Ciobanu

BUCHAREST, Mar 26 2008 (IPS) - “We just live for years in cages, just like in a zoo. But the toughest punishment of all is not the long sentences in our stables – it’s that we’re being ignored.”

Gavril Hrib, a convicted double murderer, was speaking out on behalf of his other fellow lifers during an interview in the library of the Rahova prison on the outskirts of Bucharest, the Romanian capital. He has served out 17 years of his 20-year life sentence in a two-man cell, only stepping outside once a day for a one or two-hour stretch of his limbs.

Ion Babus, another lifer from the 30 in Rahova, shyly recounted to his rare visitor how he passed his days. “I go to bed with the television and wake up with it,” he said.

His television taught him everything. “I can compare and learn from other people’s mistakes.” Nobody outside his cell had ever guided him about anything – neither in communist times nor today.

Babus, a greying 50-year-old, has spent most of his life behind prison bars. In 1980, he was sentenced to death for the killing of a Romanian priest during a violent robbery. After six months on death row, expecting the firing squad every day, he was amnestied by former president Nicolae Ceausescu and eventually released in 1988.

“In those days, the most they ever did was beat me up. The stricter they were, the more stubborn I became.”

In 1989, he was back in prison again, released three years later and almost immediately imprisoned for another crime. In 1999, he was sentenced to life after a fatal drunken pub brawl. The death penalty in Romania had been abolished after the end of communism in 1989.

Adrian Stroe, also serving a life sentence for murder, confided that he had been close to suicide in his cell. “When my mother died I felt I’d lost everything.” Then his cellmate put a Bible in his hands. From that moment on his life took on meaning. His ambition now is to set up a training centre for ex-convicts once he has been released.

“My friends from here have told me how they’ve been rejected when they go back into the world. They’re turned away when they look for a factory job. They try to make it on their own and they are crushed by the difficulties. They turn to the churches for help and get if for a few days or a season. But soon they are back in here once more knocking on the prison gates.” Getting arrested again was the only way to get a meal and a roof over their heads.

The Association for the Defence of Human Rights in Romania – Helsinki Committee (APADOR-CH) has found lifers in Romania endure “terrible stress”, confirming the complaints of the three interviewed by IPS. The way prisoners were treated throughout the Romanian penal system was “still far from European standards”, it said in its 2004 report. Its representatives interviewed thousands of inmates and prison staff over a ten-year period to produce a 105-page study.

There has been some progress over the past decade, most notably a ‘demilitarisation’ following new staff regulations in 2004. But reform has been slow because of “public abhorrence to the world of prisons”.

“It’s true, television and the daily walk are their only activities,” Nicoleta Popescu, a lawyer working with APADOR-CH, confirmed to IPS. “There’s no work for them in prison. The very few special programmes open to them are for three months at the most. These are only available to a limited number of prisoners.”

In Rahova lifers could “on request” participate in such programmes, though only two were attending school at primary level, prison officials confirmed to IPS.

Most of the 100 or so lifers in Romania were excluded from taking part in any cultural and educational activities in prison. This reduced their chances of reintegration after release. It also increased the possibility of conflict with other inmates and staff, APADOR-CH has reported.

Reform could come only if there were more guards and escort staff throughout the Romanian penal system, APADOR-CH said. In some prisons one staff member was responsible for 20 inmates. But the recommended ratio was one to five, according to the Council of Europe’s Committee on the Prevention of Torture.

Babus and Hrib say they have created their own pastime activities. Babus paints icons and Hrib weaves Gobelin tapestries which are sold outside the prison.

The three lifers may have been muted in their criticisms, with a prison press officer nearby. Over the past two years in Rahova, a prison with 1,415 inmates reputedly with some of the best conditions of any in the country, there were 33,860 cases of sickness.

Most inmates in Romania were reporting ill with respiratory complaints, stomach pains and skin diseases. Heart complaints and self-inflicted wounds were also common.

APADOR-CH has identified overcrowding as the main cause for the “huge” amount of respiratory illness in Romanian jails. “It is hard to breathe in the rooms, especially in the summer, and the chances of getting contaminated are high.”

But the National Administration of Penitentiaries (ANP) reports that Romanian prisons currently have 25 percent fewer inmates than their capacity.

“The ANP just assumes that if they do not have two to three people to a bed there’s no overcrowding,” Popescu responded. APADOR-CH did acknowledge that overcrowding was now less of a problem than before.

APADOR-CH blamed the poor quality and unhygienic preparation of food for stomach illnesses. Meals contained “few vegetables” but always a “piece of fat”.

Skin diseases were put down to the lice, cockroaches and mice which “infested” many prisons. Blankets and mattresses were also filthy and toilets out of order.

Many voices are now calling for a new penal code which would help ease some of these problems. The current code, slightly modified, dates back to 1969. This allows for sentences of up to 12 years even for minor crimes.

Fewer and shorter prison terms would reduce the number of inmates.

In 2006, the ministry of justice drafted a new code incorporating alternative punishments to imprisonment, eliminating prison sentences for minors and specifying conditions for release on probation. The text was put up for public debate but has so far not been adopted.

“The future of this code is uncertain,” Monica Macovei, the justice minister responsible at the time, told IPS. “Unfortunately, the code is being stalled for political reasons although politics should have nothing to do with the penal code.”

APADOR-CH has suggested one immediate way of improving life for the long-term prisoners without waiting for politicians to make up their minds. Lifers should be allowed out of their cells to participate in general prison cultural and educational activities – as is the case in many other countries.