Drugs and mobile phones in Portuguese prisons: how the system fails every day
Inmates with €900 smartphones, parties streamed live, and drugs entering via guards and visits. Observador reveals the failings of the Portuguese prison system.
"It's come in": how drugs and mobile phones reach Portuguese prison cells
Observador reports that during a strike by prison guards at the Paços de Ferreira establishment, drugs became scarce for three days. The inmates were growing increasingly tense. The situation was only resolved when a wing chief, in a tone of relief, let slip the phrase everyone was waiting for: "It's come in. You can relax now because it's come in." Pedro, a fictional name for a former inmate with 24 years served and three years out on release, recalls that the tension dissipated immediately.
"In some prisons, the problem of aggression can increase if drugs run out. It has already happened," confirms to Observador Vítor Ilharco, secretary-general of the Portuguese Association for Support to Inmates (APAR).
A lucrative business within the walls
Drugs inside prisons are sold at prices far higher than on the outside. Pedro describes the logic plainly: "The quantity is much smaller, but much better paid than out here. A block of hashish got to five thousand euros, got to ten thousand... at many different prices."
The same pattern applies to mobile phones. A device worth €50 on the common market can be sold inside a prison for €500 — by prison guards. And the business does not stop there. "There's a raid and they seize the mobile phones. After 48 or 72 hours, they're back inside," explains Pedro. According to the former inmate, the guards involved track the devices after the sale, recover them months later and commercialise them again — sometimes to the same person.
Joana, a fictional name for a prison guard who preferred anonymity, does not hesitate in her description: "It's a big business, it is." And she goes further in her denunciation: "It's impossible for inmates to have €900 smartphones that came in via visits. They can only have come in via guards or staff." The topic infuriates her. During a trip to court with an inmate, she explains, "he can speak to people outside", exposing guards to ambushes. "We could die there," she warns.
The union admits and condemns
Jorge Alves, president of the National Union of the Prison Guard Corps (SNCGP), does not sidestep the issue. He acknowledges the reality and condemns clearly those who participate in these schemes: "They should be the first to guarantee that this did not happen. They taint the profession. These people have to be exemplarily punished. We do not want them here."
Alves tells Observador that he reiterates the alert "every time a government changes, every time a Directorate-General [for Reintegration and Prison Services] changes". He also points out that visits continue to be the main avenue for illicit objects to enter, but that the system's weaknesses go far beyond that point.
Live parties and sexual relations during visits
The evidence of what enters prisons is public. In February, a group of inmates streamed live a party inside Paços de Ferreira, an episode that led to the dismissal of the establishment's director. Daily, posts are made on social networks by inmates serving sentences. In the visiting room, according to sources heard by Observador, sexual relations between prisoners and visitors even occur.
Gatehouses and metal detectors: the obstacle that does not work
The gatehouse and metal detection gates should be the first line of containment. In practice, they are one of the easiest points to circumvent. Jorge Alves denounces that "in most cases, visits enter without even a card" — a request having been sufficient. "It is one of the norms that directors circumvent," he states, adding that "guards who try to be rigorous are admonished in some way": there are cases of guards removed from gatehouses for "causing too many problems".
At entry, the procedure is limited to identification of visitors and inspection of the bags they carry. The "mules" — people recruited to introduce drugs or mobile phones — know this. That is why they do not place the illicit objects in those bags: they transport them on their body, sometimes in the anus or vagina.
A system that everyone has learned to exploit
The portrait that emerges from Observador's account is one of a system with structural weaknesses that inmates, visitors and even some staff have learned to use systematically. Whether through the absence of clear rules, poor control of visits or a shortage of guards, the limits are broken regularly.
Those who are or have been connected to prison services describe with naturalness that it is easy to introduce ten grammes of cocaine or five mobile phones into a prison — "almost as if, in practice, the doors were open", writes Observador. From the gatehouses to cell searches, from objects thrown over walls to practically non-existent control inside, this is the portrait of the (in)security of Portuguese prisons, told by those who live or have lived within them.
In the most recent case that motivated part of this investigation, a woman was arrested attempting to deliver one hundred grammes of drugs hidden in trainers to an inmate at Custóias Prison Establishment — an episode that, according to experts and sources heard, is far from being an exception.
Source: Google News PT — Crime (pt)