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Anastasia Balezdrova

The prison is a world of its own, say the people who work there. The same applies to the problems they face but the difference is that they often are much more intense.

The problem with crime in downtown Athens, where unknown numbers of illegal immigrants live, jumped to the fore in the most unfortunate way last week. However, what most citizens possibly do not know is that the Greek prisons are also overcrowded with immigrants. Only in the prison in Alikarnasos on the island of Crete they are 75% of the total number of prisoners.

This change, for which the Greek society definitely was not ready, naturally carried all the problems to the prisons but their staff is unable to cope with them. For this purpose, the Ministry of the Interior launched the program for intercultural training of prisons' staff called Understand Diversity. 2000 people who work in prisons, in services helping juveniles and social support services in 18 cities across the country will be trained from April to June this year. A total of 40 seminars lasting 80 hours will be held.

The Professor of Sociology at the University of Athens Gerasimos Kouzelis, who is one of the scientific researchers of the program, explained that the seminars would train jailers, the administrative and specialised scientific staff of the prisons. "The training is divided into four sections: The first section discusses the basic principles of interculturality, determining the profile of detainees from third countries and the way of solving the problems that arise from it. The second section deals with the presentation of the legal framework and the introduction of international law on human rights. Thirdly, the staff is engaged in the development of modern techniques for dealing with clashes between detainees, and fourth they are introduced to the methods of approximation and mediation." The fifth informal section of the training is for psychologists and social workers in prisons and is connected with the psychometric tests. The training will be carried by members of three of the largest universities in Greece. Sociologists are from the Athens, criminologists are from the Thracian and psychologists are from the University of Crete.

"In short, the subject of the training is the immigrants in the prison. They are not just a reality in prisons. They are a much more tangible reality than outside, even in terms of the fact that the majority of the prisoners are foreigners. This means that there is the whole range of origin in Greek prisons and the problems that this different background of people brings. One of them is the language and the fact that often the guards and the management can not communicate with some prisoners. In this case, they usually seek the help of another prisoner.

Other prisoners do not have any documents. Here the problem is the same as it is outside - people whose identity is sought and therefore it is uncertain to which group they belong. The fact that we do not know their age also makes a problem because if they are minors they should not be in jail, but in the relevant institution for minors.

Moreover, prisoners are organised in groups according to their national origin and the reasons are the solidarity and the mutual assistance between them. However, this often creates internal dynamics that are expressed in heavy clashes between the different groups. The groups set up on religious grounds act in the same way."

Gerasimos Kuzelis gave as an example the difficulties in implementing the decision on the extradition of a foreigner who is in prison, provided that it is often technically impossible, even when the person is free.

The fact that Greek prisons are overcrowded creates additional complications for the staff that often complicates the problems, precisely because the people do not know how to solve them. "Not to mention that all those who are in a prison are living behind the bars. They are even on the window in the office of the director who can not leave the building, if someone does not open him. Hence, we are talking about a syndrome of institutionalization, which leads to fear."

According to the professor, the interest in the program is very large and impressive, despite the difficulties in its implementation because of the working hours, the specifics of each prison and the fact that it should be held in parallel with the work. "The only question that was not raised was "why is this training."

"The program aims to provide information, knowledge and techniques, i.e. "what to do when..." handling a given situation. We think that all this might be discussed with the staff in parallel with the rejection of any prejudice against a person different from us."

The program is supported by the European Fund for Integration of third country nationals in Greece and is funded by European and national funds.