Rehova Prison March 2005

Life With the Lifers

Cristina Tanase and Andrew Begg venture inside Rahova, Bucharest's High Security Prison
by Cristina Tanase
March 2005

Life spins around according to its own rules inside the thick concrete walls of the Rahova high security prison in Bucharest. With the security officer asking for our identity cards and mobile phones at the entrance, the exterior becomes a different world for the rest of the day.

People who step inside each day have had to learn to cope with different rules of living. That is certainly the case of the personnel inside Section 4, which holds male prisoners sentenced to life behind bars, and Section 7 which holds women prisoners. They say that the commonly used words ‘communication’, ‘liberty’ and ‘guilt’ have different connotations inside. They also say that they discovered themselves in a different way.

“My work has taught me that little things can have far greater significance,” psychologist Mihaela Bonatiu says, speaking about the most important thing she learnt during her five years of working in the system. She works with prisoners in Section 4, all of whom have been sentenced to life, and all but one are in for murder. She confesses that some of her friends asked her how she can spend time in the same room with them. But the psychologist says her strength lay in overcoming the fear, and instead tries to emphasise the good in everyone. “We have all felt like killing someone,” she says. The main difference between us and them is that we can control ourselves, whereas they lost control, some for just a matter of seconds.”

For Dana Cenusa, press and public relations officer of the National Prisons Department (ANP), one’s freedom is just a matter of vision, since it is always subjected to daily constraints and fears. “I feel very good when I visit a prison. I feel it is much easier to talk to the people inside than to the people outside,” Ms Cenusa says. Proof comes right away with her natural gesture of lighting a cigarette and sitting down the moment we enter the office of Mihail Cosmescu, who is the commander of Section 4. Ms Cenusa says Section 4 is her favourite place in the whole prison.

Soon after our arrival, there is a rap on the steel door of Mr Cosmescu’s office, and I am startled to see a man dressed completely in black body armour - balaclava and all. He accompanies a man who is an inmate, dressed in an orange jumpsuit. The man is talking about a manuscript that has been stolen from him. When he leaves, Vivid’s editor Andrew Begg, who has accompanied us, asks, “What did he do?”

“Oh, he killed some people,” is the response.
“How many?”
“A few. We know of two at least, but there were probably more.”

Commander Cosmescu has been working in the system for eight years. There were only nine prisoners when he was moved to this section, in 2000. Now, their numbers have increased to 36 - 36, that is, of Romania’s total of 99 lifers. “Fortunately, we have managed to find a way to communicate with the prisoners,” he says.

He remembers the pains taken to reach this level of communication, especially at the beginning, when he did not know the prisoners like he does now. The extra bars required for their cells made them feel uncomfortable and created tensions, Mr Cosmescu says. So the administration had to offer them something in return: thus, the one-hour walk became a two-hour one, and a social club - a room set aside for table tennis, a pool table and some computers (but no Internet or email access) – was established.

“This is how we managed to balance the situation: by taking something from them and giving back something else,” the commander explains.
Access to psychological counselling five days a week has also been a great help towards establishing a communicative atmosphere and quenching the existing tensions between prisoners, Dana Cenusa explains.

“Society is outside these walls; it condemns the person and then locks him up in here. But the prisoner never meets society. So whom else to revenge? Those who suffer can only ever be either the prisoners themselves, or their guards,” she says, indicating Mr Cosmescu.

“Because society is something undefined, while we are tangible,” Mr Cosmescu replies raising his hands in an effort to make any obscure points clear. “There are no recipes for handling these conflicts. The art lies in your power to drive it to a common ground,” he says.

And for Mr Cosmescu, doing this can continue after working hours. “When I get home, I still can’t take my mind off these issues. I think of the prisoners who had a quarrel and whether I acted correctly by leaving them in the same room,” he says. The only time when he can really relax is when he goes fishing. Interestingly, he does not keep a gun in Section 4, and nor for that matter do any of the guards. Yet there are guns in each of the towers overlooking the prison from on high.

Carmen Mihail runs Rahova prison like a CEO runs a company. A former prosecutor, she speaks of the rising trend in violence among prisoners: “If we could at one time speak of a conformist, subservient type of prisoner, something has changed since then. I speak of those young people who, given the lack of a proper education and their drug consuming background, become extremely difficult to communicate with,” Ms Mihail says.

“An unstable family background can create serious problems inside the prison,” the director explains. “Cases of self mutilation are frequent.”

Carmen Mihail says although the number of prisoners has declined in recent years, the growing number of minors who commit crimes against family members points to a heightened level of violence in society. ANP statistics show that while there were 48,000 criminals in the imprisonment system in October 2002, by June 2004 their numbers had decreased to 41,000.

Mihaela Bonatiu indicates a possible cause that awakes more aggressive behaviour in some people than in others. “We cannot say that a man is guilty, in isolation. Everything that is around him - his environment, his friends, alcohol and drugs, violence on television, everything - plays a part in that guilt,” she says.

No simple answers can be given to what, or who, should bear the guilt. Mihaela Sasarman, who works with 80 people in a communal therapy program which has been running in Rahova prison since 1999, says, “The real question is not why somebody is a criminal, but how come someone is not.”

Beyond Commander Cosmescu’s office and the dividing iron grill that distinguishes where the prison cells begin, the doors open for the three meals each day or for the football game, the walk in the courtyard or the club programme, depending on the day. This time, however, the cell door of Remus Tudor opens outside the programme. He is to be one of several Section 4 lifers I would meet that day.

Remus Tudor was the first person in Romania’s modern history to be sentenced to life in prison, for murder. (During communism murderers were executed, as were many people convicted of far less significant crimes than murder). Later, Mihaela Bonatiu tells me that if she had her way, and the decision was hers, she could be quite confident that Remus Tudor could be released into society without posing any kind of threat.

Although the cells in Section 4 are designed to accommodate four inmates, Remes Tudor lives alone. “He doesn’t want to live with anyone else, and other inmates don’t want to live with him,” we were told. He spends most of his time painting (some of his work can be seen elsewhere in this story). A poster of a Paul Gaugin painting leans against the wall. An unfinished piece awaits the artists’ hands.

He is the only lifer we meet who doesn’t have a television. “If I had one, I would sacrifice my time for painting and for reading,” he says, standing up with his arms crossed. The cell door stays open and the guard’s presence is intimidating for him. The guard is asked to leave us alone, and with Mr Cosmescu and Dana Cenusa nearby, Remus Tudor starts speaking in a shy, soft voice.

He says he was sentenced for killing a woman he loved very much, but who was married with a family and was not sufficiently motivated to leave her family, to be with him. The woman was ten years older, and he was 19. It was March 1990, the Revolution had occurred several weeks earlier, and he may not have had the best legal representation available at the time. “I was a toy in her hands,” he says.

Another door opens outside the usual daily programme, this time for Nelu Gavrila and his roommate. Gavrila’s handshake is soft and quick, an artist’s hand: his work, a tapestry, leans unfinished against his bed. These same hands murdered Ioan Luchian Mihalea, the conductor of the Minisong children’s orchestra, in November, 1993.

He begins to talk excitedly with Dana Cenusa about his progress with learning English and dashes at the little table to search for the proof: some papers with exercises. But things are rather cramped on the table, so he leaves it for the next time she will come. He asks Andrew Begg what size shoe he takes. It transpires that Andrew, who takes a 45 shoe, has much bigger feet than Nelu, who has not bought anything for two years.

Nelu shares his cell with a man who killed his mother-in-law, and then his wife, and he has been busy showing Andrew some photographs of his family. “Nelu Gavrila, who receives no visits, could remember that I was here five months ago, also on a Thursday. For him, my visit really means something, as does your visit,” Dana Cenusa tells me.

Across the courtyard, in the small, newly whitewashed walled chapel of Section 7 for women, a young inmate has set herself the task of painting biblical scenes on the ceiling of the chapel, Michelangelo-style. Andrew Begg asks her how she ever came to be in prison. She is dressed in drab, ill-fitting pants and a sweatshirt and she is not wearing any makeup at all. I can see that Andrew is captivated by her.

“It’s a long story,” she answers, in flawless English. Her lips are trembling and she is struggling to hold back the tears.
“Well, I hope the time passes quickly,” he responds.
“At least I have something to take my mind off things,” she says, indicating the walls which will one day be covered with her paintings. Andrew asks if he can photograph her painting the chapel ceiling. She agrees, on the condition that she has her back to the camera, “In case I go to Australia one day and someone recognises me.” We find out later that she was sentenced to six years for selling heroin.

Every one of Romania’s 36 prisons hold both men and women separately. Half of the 300 women in Rahova prison are in for drug-related crimes, psychologist Gabriela Livadariu says. She was the first psychologist in Rahova, arriving there in November 1997.

“Women are only the scapegoats when it comes to crime, probably because this way, men can continue providing some financial support for the family,” Ms Livadariu says, talking about the explanations she receives from the inmates. “I never met a woman saying ‘I have nothing to lose’”.

Communication inside this section requires special treatment. Radu Chernescu has been the commander of the section for three years. He worked in the army previously, and says it is harder to maintain balance between women. One thing that he says makes him happy, however, is the lack of misdemeanours between the staff – who are all women – and the prisoners.

However, women are worse prisoners than men, a point on which agreement amongst prison staff is unanimous. “Their behaviour is very emotional: they cry, they quarrel, and cases of self-mutilation are more frequent.” Commander Chernescu explains the lack of space is prone to cause such behaviour. Rahova prison is beyond capacity, at least where the women are concerned. There are ten beds to a cell, and sometimes as many as 20 prisoners. In one cell we ventured into, there were seventeen inmates.

The insufficient number of the supervisors and guards is also a leading factor, Mr Chernescu says. “We have four or five supervisors per shift in theory. In practice, however, we are sometimes left with one supervisor per storey,” he says. In this respect, the ratio between supervisors and prisoners in the Romanian prison system is one supervisor for every seven inmates, whereas the ratio is one in two in Hungary, Spain and Turkey, one in three in Albania and one in four in Russia – so says the ANP’s statistics last updated in June 2004.

Very young mothers who commit crimes and who are then sentenced can have their sentences postponed until the child turns one. If a female inmate gives birth to a child while an inmate she will be allowed out to have the baby, after which she is sent back to prison. In prison, the child is permitted to stay with the mother until he or she turns one. There are rooms designed in the prison hospital at Rahova specifically for mothers and their children, where proper post-natal treatment is provided. When a year passes, and the mother and child must be parted, the child is then given back to the family, or, in cases where there are no relatives, he or she is given up for adoption. “It is terribly difficult, because the children are always beautiful,” says Dana Cenusa.

Ms Livadariu understands her mission here as being far from straightforward. She says she tries to stimulate the prisoners’ low interest in social activities, by creating a multifunctional club, where both the therapy group sessions and the aerobics classes take place. “Things are going pretty well. The measure for my therapy group is their feedback. But I cannot guarantee that they will still be interested when they get outside,” she says.

The psychologist understands, however, that the complexity of her mission lies inside the prison. “You don’t work as much for the moment when they become free, but work here for peace, silence, and as normal life as can be expected,” she says.