A 42-year-old inmate from the village of Tebreshte died inside the Idrizovo correctional facility after climbing a utility pole and grabbing a live wire. The incident was reported at 14:43, and the emergency medical team that arrived on site pronounced him dead.

The police statement is short and technically precise: the man climbed, he grabbed, he fell. That is everything said publicly. Not a word about why the inner yard of the country's largest prison has a pole an inmate can climb, or why a live wire hangs from it within reach of a human hand.

The prison holding more people under lock and key than any other in Macedonia is supposed to be a controlled environment - that is literally its definition. The inner yard is not a forest or an abandoned industrial site; it is part of the facility where inmates spend time every day under supervision. If an uncovered source of lethal voltage exists there, that is not an accident falling out of the sky. It is a failure that was waiting to find its man.

"Measures are being taken to clarify the case," police say. We know the phrasing by heart. The question that remains is whether the clarifying ever reaches an inspection of the facility's electrical installations, or whether it ends with a report about one man who did something he should not have done.

Idrizovo has for years been a synonym for overcrowding, for buildings falling apart, and for reforms announced from one government term to the next. Every report on conditions there ends with recommendations, and every following report starts from the same point. This time the bill was not paid by the system - it was paid by one man who was in the system's hands.