Junta de Paços de Ferreira hires prisoners to facilitate integration



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Hiring a detainee costs about 400 euros, twice as much as a contract of insertion, but the mayor of Paços de Ferreira assures that this worth it. During the day, two prisoners from the Vale do Sousa prison wear the uniform of the parish council of Paços de Ferreira.

She is one of the few inmates of the prison to benefit from the Open Abroad Scheme, a move to reintegrate society.

The municipality is satisfied with the officials and the quality of work, but do not miss to note the financial effort that this requires. The fact is that having a prisoner at work costs twice as much as an integrated employee of a work contract (CIS) from the Employment and Vocational Training Center, for example, stresses Alexandre Costa. Yet, the junta president hopes to replicate this project and hire more prisoners.

Jorge Fernandes is from Aveiro, 43 years old and imprisoned since 2012 for theft. Manuel Teixeira, 36, comes from Lixa and is serving a four-year sentence for drug trafficking. Both took the opportunity to work in an open plan. In recent months, they have done construction, painting, street cleaning and gardening for the board of directors. "Trying to reintegrate society, that's fine, I'm an electrician by profession and I've worked on several works in prison," says Jorge. "Being here is going to help get out permanently, because having a prison too long has the toxic effects of this prolonged exposure," said the inmate, who was granted parole.

Manuel also lives with the desire for freedom and assumes that this "work" is important to let them live with "normal people". "We walk all day in the middle of the day, the fact that we leave the prison in the morning and we come back at six in the evening is different," says the prisoner. This opening to the outside motivates and gives hope. "In a free environment, we acquire work habits that we did not have," he admits, assuming that this way will help him get his parole at the end of the year. ;year.

a protocol with the EP of Vale do Sousa. The autarky is waiting for the placement of a third inmate and there is a room in a private county company. "There are not many entities to make this application at the moment," says Elisabete Ferreira Dias, director of the prison, noting that it's a "project" approach to freedom "that only applies to inmates meeting certain requirements. Inmates are seizing these opportunities for gradual reintegration, he says. "During the day, they are ordinary workers, I am convinced that these people leave with a much greater capacity to face the world of work and the outside world," he explains

. at the job center. "But our decision factor could not only be economic, it also had to be a social factor, inclusion and reintegration," he maintains.

The cost per employee is about 400 euros. "I do not understand why an IRC should pay around 200 euros a month and when you talk to a prisoner you have to pay double, which clearly discourages local authorities," he says. "An inmate has a heavier stigma and reintegration still has to be borne by the contracting entities, state support should be the same," he says.

The penitentiary establishment of Vale do Sousa has more than 360 prisoners

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