Filenews 23 October 2025
The prison guards are sounding the alarm for the Central Prisons and the conditions that prevail both in terms of security and living. In a letter to President Christodoulidis, which is also communicated to Marios Hartsiotis, the Sectoral Council of Prison Guards of the Pancyprian Trade Union "ISOTITA", emphasizes that the relocation of the prisons is necessary. The Government's plan, as he emphasizes for the expansion of the premises, has already failed. The prisons are suffocatingly full. At the same time, the mobile phone deactivation system failed with crime being controlled through the cells.
See the letter as it is:
The Prison Guards' Sectoral Council, representing the majority of the uniformed personnel of the prison system, addresses you recognizing the will you have shown, together with the competent Minister, Mr. Marios Hartsiotis, to deal with chronic pathologies in the sector. Your historic decision to double the special risk allowance, as well as the promotion of the necessary recruitment of personnel, are tangible evidence of your understanding of the burden on uniformed personnel.
With the same sense of responsibility, and precisely because these positive moves demonstrate your will to act, we must point out that they are in danger of being completely nullified by a fundamental strategic error: the insistence on costly half-measures within the existing, saturated and inadequate prison.
Recent experience is an irrefutable witness. The completion of Phase 1 (the conversion of the old open prison) has already failed to resolve the problem. Just as we had warned, critical overcrowding remains, as confirmed by the official statistics of the Council of Europe (SPACE I), which continue to rank Cyprus among the countries with "severe" congestion.
As Phase 1 failed, the Government's intention to invest an additional €35 million for Phase 2 (the new wing with a view to 2028) on the same failed plot is a guaranteed waste of resources and a perpetuation of the impasse.
Mr President, the situation is no longer just about overcrowding. It concerns national dignity. The reports of the Committee against Torture (CPT) of the Council of Europe are a catapult. Petitions of prisoners deprived of basic human dignity, such as access to a private toilet in a cell, are not consistent with the European rule of law.
This picture already has tangible legal consequences. UK courts (Courts of Appeal) refuse to extradite defendants to Cyprus, based on these CPT reports. They consider that detention in our prisons constitutes a risk of violation of Article 3 of the ECHR (inhuman treatment). The Republic of Cyprus is treated as an unsafe country for the execution of European Arrest Warrants.
At the same time, operational security within the institution is collapsing. The failure of the new, costly mobile phone shutdown system (jammers) is not a technical detail; It is a confession of inability to control space. It allows the uncontrolled guidance of criminal networks and puts the lives of prison guards at daily risk.
International penitentiary science is categorical: vertical, civil institutions are obsolete. The only solution is campus-style structures that allow for the control, security, segregation of prisoners and provide real workplaces and education that promote correction.
Excellency
The half-measures are over and their failure has been recorded. The prison guards have exceeded the limits of their endurance.
We invite you to lead a historic, brave breakthrough. We ask for your immediate personal intervention for:
1. The immediate cancellation of the planning for the €35 million wing (Phase 2), sparing the Republic from a certain failure and waste.
2. The transfer of all these resources to the immediate preparation of a feasibility study and location for the construction of a new, modern penitentiary.
This new institution must be located strictly outside residential areas and outside the Buffer Zone, designed in accordance with international standards of security and human dignity.
It is the only act that will restore operational security, the international prestige of Democracy and the dignity of workers and prisoners.
