The Director-General for Reintegration and Prison Services sent an email this Thursday to regional directors and prison directors across the country with a warning: officials are “softening the rules of prevention” for Covid-19, removing masks from the face, and are not being directly scolded. “This is not the time to let your guard down,” he wrote in the message sent.
Rómulo Mateus begins the text to which the Observer had access to say that he has received “diffuse reports” that report “workers who soften the rules of prevention and remove the face mask, inside the establishments”Prisoners. And he says that if this is really happening, “it calls into question all the effort we have been making for several months to prevent the pandemic from entering and spreading inside our facilities”.
Image of email sent yesterday
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“I do not understand that a professional in functions, inside the establishment, or abroad on a mission, loosens the rules of prevention, risking illness and becoming a focus of spreading the pandemic”, he writes saying even less he realizes that “Directors, Commissioners, Chiefs, Coordinators, do not immediately repress so irresponsible attitude as it is ”.
And he also asked that all the directors and heads of the prison system promote “vigilance and civic discipline for the protection of all” and that they prevent the misuse of personal protective equipment.
The letter was sent the week that the first positive cases emerged inside prisons. First three employees at the Prison Hospital of Contact and now three more workers from the Prison Establishment of Caravan. In Caxias, tests were carried out on people who had contact with the infected and all were negative. In Carregueira, tests were carried out only on workers in direct contact with contaminants and only afterwards will tests be carried out on prisoners. However, the visits that are scheduled for this Friday ended up canceled.
Just three days ago, the Minister of Justice paid a visit to Carregueira prison where she guaranteed that the overwhelming majority of prison establishments were already prepared to resume visits to prisoners, in “health security conditions”. Cited by Lusa, Francisca Van Dunem said that this had required “an enormous effort to adapt spaces”, said on a visit that she intended to mark the resumption of visits to establishments and educational centers. On that day the minister was accompanied by Rómulo Mateus.
“The distancing rules are strictly enforced and we do not have a case inside the prison system,” said the minister, adding that the 21 cases that exist are external, including those recorded in prisoners.
At the beginning of April, the country was still in a state of emergency, the Minister of Justice was being heard in the Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Affairs about the Government’s intention to release some prisoners for a better management of space, in prison establishments, in the strategy prevention of disease in the chains. The idea was to guarantee the means to fulfill the physical distance.
At that time, Francisco Van Dunem was clear on the consequences that were expected if the new coronavirus entered prisons. “Studies indicate that a case of Covid-19 in prisons allows, in one week, an contamination of 200 inmates and from there the data is geometric. Therefore, it is necessary to create spaces in prison establishments that favor social separation “, defended the minister who considered that” the spread of the virus in a chain is done as a fuse”.
That same month, the Government proposed and the President of the Republic accepted grant 14 pardons for extraordinary release of prisoners due to the Covid-19 pandemic, addressing prisoners serving prison sentences, who are over 65 and who are sick
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