Polish jails open doors for a day

Warsaw bank manager Grazyna Dubiel would not normally be behind bars on a Sunday.

"I'd be out taking a walk somewhere," the 57-year-old said while following guards down a windowless corridor of a jail in the Polish capital.

Dubiel and her husband were among 60 curious members of the public who toured the Warszawa-Bialoleka penitentiary, Poland's biggest prison and one of 10 Polish facilities to throw open their gates for a day in February.

"We're still seen as this institution that detains inmates and that's it: nothing else happens," said prison psychologist Dorota Alame, who ushered visitors in through a barred door with a smile and sky-high heels.

"We wanted to show that we really work with the inmates. We're constantly giving them tools they can use on the outside."

Polish prisons are overcrowded, with around 80,000 inmates for a country of 38 million people, said Piotr Kladoczny, a criminal lawyer with the Warsaw-based Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights.