Portuguese prison guards decry country’s penal system as ‘obsolete’

The Portuguese Minister of Justice announced urgent audits of the security and management systems at the country’s 49 prisons following the escape of five prisoners from Vale dos Judeus prison in Alcoentre on 7 September.

But prison guards say the investigation has come too late.

“If they had listened to us, the previous government, we would have been able to tackle this in advance. We know that there is no security in Portuguese prisons at all,” Frederico Morais, President of the Prison Guard Union, told Euronews.

One major security issue at Vale dos Judeus is the deactivation of watchtowers, which owing to to a lack of staff were replaced by a video surveillance system. The towers not only monitored prisoners, but also made it possible to detect any strange movements outside the prison.

“The periphery has to be secured by human beings, there’s no other option,” explains Morais. “Human beings have to be there to monitor them, but on a national level, the towers have almost all been deactivated, because there are no guards to work inside the prisons.

“Where do you turn? To the towers. We need to reactivate the towers and put guards inside the prisons.”

In addition to the lack of resources, prison guards have expressed concern about being assigned multiple responsibilities for which they have not been properly trained, particularly with regard to the social reintegration of prisoners.

“There are no guards, no vehicles, the infrastructure is dilapidated, the prison system is obsolete,” says Morais. “We keep saying that we can’t be the only country in Europe that has combined punishment with reintegration. We can’t combine a security force with reintegration, because we are prison guards, our job is to guarantee the security of prisons and not to reintegrate prisoners into society.”

The problem is compounded by prison overcrowding. Figures from 2023 show that overall prison occupancy is above 90%, a level already considered high risk. There are 24 prisons above the occupancy limit; Porto’s prison, capacity 675, hosted 872 prisoners last year.

In 2023 alone, nine inmates escaped from prisons across Portugal. There is not yet full data on the number of escapes in 2024.