Union leader highlights further discrepancies in ‘official narrative’ on mass jailbreak
The president of Portugal’s National Prison Guard Union (SNCGP) has warned that the country’s prisons need around 1,500 more guards. The shortage of human resources constitutes the “biggest problem in the prison system”, Frederico Morais has told Lusa.
Speaking as he has been to multiple news channels in the wake of what Lusa calls “a prison break that has shocked the nation”, Morais said that for a prison population of almost 13,000 inmates, there are around 4,000 active prison guards, when “the ideal” would be around 5,500.
He believes new guards should be put to work “as soon as possible” through a recruitment drive for 500 vacancies.
Morais blames the escape of five prisoners on Saturday from the Vale dos Judeus high security prison in Alcoentre, north of Lisbon, on the shortage of guards, which he says led to prison watchtowers being decommissioned and demolished.
“Video surveillance cameras may be very good, but they are not for this situation”, as there are not enough guards to watch them in real time.
The union leader also guaranteed that, at the time of the prisoners’ escape on Saturday morning, there were 31 prison guards on duty in Vale dos Judeus (when the director-general of prison services talked of 33). Under a previous roster system there would have been 50.
“In 2018, when we had the previous roster, there were 50 guards there,” he said. “We went from 50 to 30. The service is the same, the prisoners are the same, it is all the same”, except for when it comes to guard numbers.
On Saturday “we missed the fact that there wasn’t a guard in the patio, who used to be in charge. Now there isn’t a guard, because there are no guards,” he repeated.
According to the official narrative, the escape of the five prisoners from the supposedly high-security facility was recorded by the video surveillance systems at 9.56 am but was only detected 40 minutes later, when other inmates were returning to their cells.
This version is disputed by prison guards, who suggest the time lapse between video recording and detection was much more like “an hour and a half”.
The ‘intense manhunt’ now underway is not expected to be instantly successful, authorities have conceded, as the escapees had a head start, and, “planned everything down to the last detail”.
Source material: LUSA
