It’s a pro-active solution for a workforce languishing behind bars – and it’s a way of extending space in a system suffering from serious overcrowding. Inmates at Lisbon’s Caxias jail have just rebuilt a wing, creating space for 70 new arrivals. It is the second phase of a two-pronged scheme that is catching on in a system that sees over 14.200 prisoners crammed into 50 jails up and down the country.
As justice minister Paula Teixeira da Cruz affirmed, the use of prison labour saves huge sums of money while teaching inmates a trade at the same time – one they can practice when released back into society.
Officially opening the new wing last week, secretary of state for justice António Costa Moura said a third and final phase of building should be finished by the end of the year, by which time the capacity at the prison will leap from 270 to 505.
