Tahíche prison unions stage protest with "symbolic sit-in" in director's office

The ACAIP, CSIF, and FSP-UGT unions, with representation at the Tahíche Penitentiary Center, held a symbolic sit-in in the prison director's office this Thursday. The officials from the Lanzarote prison wanted to show their support for their colleagues in Madrid, who were also demonstrating this Thursday under the slogan "Enough is Enough. We have rights" to protest "the situation the sector is going through."According to a statement, this situation is due "above all to the institutional drift installed in the Penitentiary Administration, as well as the inhibition of its highest officials, coupled with the breach of signed agreements, the non-payment of salaries, and the unbearable workload resulting from overcrowding."They add that proof of this is that the Tahíche Penitentiary Center is "at full capacity, which, together with poor planning in the construction of the center, leads to great difficulty in applying adequate treatment, as well as for their re-education and social reintegration due to the shortage of training and therapeutic opportunities, with certain activities being carried out in prefabricated barracks that violate any type of security and control of the official towards the inmates.""Serious structural failures"In addition, they point out that "the structural failures are very serious." A fact that, they assure, "was already reported to the Labor Inspectorate, which ruled that it could not shut down the center for its reform due to what it is and represents." "We hope that the second phase still under construction will not be the accumulation of absurdities that the current center has been," they add.The unions also mention the "Ángel Guerra" Social Insertion Center, which they say was inaugurated "with a 30 percent staff cut, with the consequent workload it produces, and the serious errors that can be generated due to the lack of personnel."The unions state that this situation, which is experienced "in all prisons nationwide," has led to "the union of all unions in the sector, since old memories of very bad times come to mind, those late 80s and early 90s, where prisons were authentic powder kegs with weekly riots and assaults on officials on a daily basis."For all these reasons, the ACAIP-USO, CC.OO, CIG, CSI-F, and FSP-UGT unions have addressed the First Vice President of the Government and Minister of the Interior, by means of a letter dated November 11, informing him "in detail" of the situation in which we consider the Penitentiary Administration to be, in order that, as the highest responsible, "he puts order in the institution."