MADRID, 7 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The prison population has rebounded slightly in 2022, accounting for a total of 46,468 inmates in a year that leaves a 5% rise in prisoners over 60 years of age, according to data as of December 31 from Penitentiary Institutions.
The balance of the last twelve months shows an increase of 1.1% in the prison population in the penitentiary centers of the general administration of the State: it closed 2021 with 45,963 inmates and a year later there are 505 more, of which 434 are men and 71 women.
In addition, the balance of the last year confirms an increase of 5.3% to reach 3,046 inmates aged 60 or over (152 more prisoners), according to sources from Penitentiary Institutions told Europa Press. In this last figure, both new admissions and those cases of aging of persons deprived of liberty from before 2022 are added.
ACAIP-UGT has warned that in 2022 “the trend of the last twelve years will be broken”. The union provides a figure close to 56,000 prisoners – about a thousand more compared to 2021 – since it also counts the prisons of Catalonia and the Basque Country, both autonomous communities with transferred powers.
The union organization also alludes to the “greater tension in Spanish prisons with 50% more attacks on workers.” “If this year’s numbers mark a trend, and early action is not taken, safety problems may arise from overcrowding,” he said in a statement.
The union organization points out that some 3,000 vacancies remain to be filled because public employment offers “barely cover the natural losses, a situation that tends to worsen due to the aging of the workforce.”
It also demands the recognition by law of prison workers as agents of the authority, as well as measures such as a new classification of the centers that results in an “updating of remuneration” or a new organization chart that makes it possible to comply with “reeducation and reintegration that attributes the Spanish Constitution”.
