Spain bets on mixed-gender prisons
The solely feminine inmate performed soccer with 21 male inmates at a jail in northwest Spain. This is a part of a push in the direction of blended dwelling in prisons, which continues to be uncommon in Europe.
“Let go of the ball!” Ambra, a 25-year-old Albanian who didn’t need to give his final title, yelled at considered one of his male teammates.
She tried to regulate the ball and pushed her opponent as onerous as she was pushed.
“Why are prisons the only places without mixed spaces?” she wished to know.
A person and a girl have been dwelling collectively since 2021 in a wing of the Teixeiro jail close to La Coruña in Spain’s lush Galicia area.
The purpose is to higher put together inmates for reintegration into society upon launch.
Of the 55 inmates within the jail’s Nelson Mandela cell block, 20 are ladies.
They and the boys take part collectively in day by day actions corresponding to train, group remedy, and job coaching.
They work and eat collectively.
The remainder of the time, they’re in the identical hallway however in separate cells.
Inmates should volunteer to be a part of this block and are chosen primarily based on their conduct.
Prisoners convicted of sexual assault are excluded.
In the cafeteria, inmate Christina ready meals with different men and women, and inmate Helga labored out with male inmates within the gymnasium.
– “Prepare for life” –
Considered a reference level in Europe in the case of ladies’s rights, Spain has been experimenting with coeducational prisons for greater than 20 years.
There are at the moment 20 mixed-gender cell blocks in Spain, with 202 ladies and 925 males taking part in joint actions.
This is only a fraction of Spain’s whole jail inhabitants of round 47,000.
But the federal government of Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is encouraging the nation’s jail system to additional develop mixed-gender cells.
“There is no point in preparing for life outside a prison where only half the population is there,” stated Nadia Arias, deputy director of Teixeiro Prison.
She stated coeducational prisons helped inmates turn into accustomed to a society the place women and men coexist.
Arias stated the initiative will enable feminine inmates, who’re far fewer in quantity, to entry providers and packages obtainable to males.
Ricardo, a repeat offender who has hung out in solitary confinement, stated he hesitated when jail directors prompt he transfer to a coed cell as a result of he had “spent a lot of time with men.”
He says he prefers it now as a result of it is much less aggravating.
In an all-male jail, defending your belongings earns you respect, the 47-year-old stated, and “a dirty look can lead to a knife fight or a fist fight.”
– ‘good concept’ –
Ambra, a 25-year-old Albanian, stated males in her blended block typically misunderstand her friendliness and suppose she is “looking for a relationship or something like that.”
“So I put up a barrier,” she defined.
“Sexist behavior happens just as much inside prisons as it does outside,” stated Ana Suarez, a counselor at El Gete, a non-governmental group that helps individuals battling habit and works with inmates in prisons. .
The jail gives inmates workshops on “deconstructing masculinity.”
Prison administration stated it had not skilled any “significant incidents” within the blended block, which had “significant demand” from prisoners wanting to hitch it.
Mixed prisons are much less frequent in different elements of Europe.
Neighboring France, for instance, has allowed co-educational incarceration since 2009, however there aren’t any prisons the place women and men are housed in the identical space like Teixeiro.
In French prisons, women and men solely combine throughout scheduled actions.
“I think it’s a very good idea for men and women to live together, because that’s how life is on the outside,” Ambra stated.
Source: guardian.ng