The Ministry of Justice is to spend €500,000 on expanding the discredited SIRESP emergency communications system across all of Portugal’s prisons.
The Ministry currently is "undergoing a procedure to acquire radio equipment for further expansion of the SIRESP network in prison services," according to a report on the Portuguese prison service.
This ministry report outlines a ten year investment plan of €446.5 million which includes building five new prisons and closing down eight existing facilities.
Among the items of expenditure is the extension of the SIRESP system to all prisons. This has gone to tender, even though there is only one supplier.
SIRESP currently is patchy in many of Portugal’s prisons, meaning the guards who are not near a landline have to use their own mobile phones if there is an emergency such as an escape.
Communications failure was blamed for the escape of three men from Caxias prison, one of whom, Portuguese-Israeli Joaquim Bitton Matos, remains at large and continues to embarass the authorities by posting pictures of himself on social media.
The study proposes the closure of prisons in Lisbon, Caxias, Setúbal, Ponta Delgada, Odemira, Silves, Leiria and Viseu, which between them hold 1,857 inmates, arguing that the facilities’ "age, state of repair and location justifies their replacement."
The five new prisons will hold 2,400 people and are planned for the Setúbal area, the Minho region, the district of Aveiro, the Algarve and the island of São Miguel in the Açores.
Another of the proposals is to hire, by 2027, 200 new prison guards and 125 ancillary staff.
