Convicts Swallow Spoons and Thermometers

“Life is different on this side of the walls and barbed wire. We live differently, there are different rules and all this causes psychological pressure,” said 40-year old Seyran and grew silent, wishing to limit his description of everyday life to these few words.

It was difficult in general for this former public official and candidate of sciences to speak of his everyday life. He is serving a five-and-a-half year prison sentence and all his days at the Convicts’ Hospital are spent staring down the road to the home where his family is waiting for him. His mother is gravely ill and he recently lost a child, and the stress exacerbated a skin disorder he suffers from.

Seyran is one of the 255 convicts serving sentences at the Convicts’ Hospital, an institution under the Ministry of Justice. Sixteen of the “residents” are HIV-positive, 40 of them suffer from tuberculosis, and the others – ranging in age from 18 to 87 years old – have psychiatric disorders or other serious conditions.

The other convicts are in this institution only temporarily. They walk freely here within certain permitted hours during the day. The convicts can use the money they receive for work to buy cigarettes, sweets, juice and other items from a small kiosk located in the yard.

The are various cross-stones place all along the path to the cafeteria and the convicts have set up a small chapel on the adjacent wall. This scene – with people standing near the wall or squatting next to it, dressed in dark colors and fingering worry beads – was not nearly as strange as the cabinet in the doctors’ room of the hospital.