Prison phones move toward criminal charge

Home affairs minister Glenn Bedingfield announced the planned change in a video shared on social media, according to Newsbook. He said he was surprised to learn that possessing a phone in prison was not already a criminal offence, but a breach of prison regulations that can lead to sanctions such as the loss of privileges.

The three inmates identified by Newsbook were Robert Agius, known as tal-Maksar, George Degiorgio and Italian national Damiano Torrisi. Newsbook reported that Agius and Degiorgio are serving life sentences for murder, while Torrisi is serving a five-year term over a violent armed robbery in which a shopkeeper was badly injured.

That helps explain the government’s rush to harden the rule, but it also exposes the limit of the measure. Extra prison time may sound like a sharper deterrent on paper. For prisoners already serving life sentences, the larger problem is not the wording of the offence but the fact that phones got into cells at all.

Bedingfield also announced plans for a professional standards unit at the prison. On the available facts, that may be the more revealing part of the response. A handset in a cell is a disciplinary breach; several phones in the hands of inmates in separate divisions suggests a security system that failed before any punishment could begin.

Newsbook reported that the latest twist, leaked by the Labour Party newspaper KullĦadd, was that the phones were allegedly being used to plan “a big one,” potentially a murder plot. Lovin Malta, also citing KullĦadd, said sources close to the investigation alleged there was “a murder plan which could have happened in the coming days,” while noting there was no certainty. That remains an allegation, not an established fact, but it shows why this episode has become politically harder for the government to contain.

There is still a distance between announcement and law. Newsbook’s report did not set out a bill or penalty structure. For now, what is established is that three inmates obtained phones inside Corradino, and the government is only now moving to turn that possession into a standalone crime.