Ibrahim Muhammad Badawood

Al-Madina

A video recently went viral on social media showing inmates at Jeddah’s Briman Prison injecting themselves with syringes and claiming that they were using drugs. A senior official at the prison said the syringes had insulin in them and that the inmates were diabetic.



A spokesman for the General Prison Directorate also said that preliminary information indicated that the two men who appeared in the video had been released a few months ago. Medical records at the hospital showed that they were known to doctors and had health conditions. He added that investigations were ongoing.



Other sources said the video was filmed a long time ago, around seven months before, and that two of the people who appeared in it were discharged several months ago. The sources added that posting the video on social media was an attempt to take revenge on prison officials or other inmates.



Violations sometimes take place inside prisons. Of course, efforts should be exerted to reform prisoners and increase control and monitoring to eliminate corruption. Regardless of the syringes and what they contained, anyone seeing the video would notice flagrant violations, including syringes and cell phones in the possession of inmates. Prisons are supposed to be safe places where people who commit crimes are punished and given opportunities to reform themselves.



I would like to thank the General Prison Directorate for swiftly responding to the video as well as for publishing the results of the preliminary investigations. The directorate formed a committee to investigate what happened and promised to publish the final results later. Let us learn from our mistakes and use them to develop the level of services provided to prison inmates. We want our prisons to be places of reform and guidance.