Decent prison crucial

IT DID not require last October’s 5.6-magnitude earthquake to reveal that Jamaica’s maximum security prisons were foul, crumbling places, more appropriate for the pages of a Dickens novel than a 21st-century society.

But, hopefully, the further damage caused by the tremor to the facilities at Tower Street in Kingston, and Spanish Town, St Catherine, will end the government’s long procrastination and galvanise it into building a modern prison. The safety of inmates and staff, and sheer decency, demand it.

The good thing – given the government’s old claim of its inability to finance a new facility – is that it has in hand an offer from private investors to build, own, operate and transfer (BOOT) a new prison, at a cost no higher than what the State currently spends on the existing correctional centres. Unfortunately, after more than two years, there has been no serious engagement of stakeholders, either on the specific offer or what a privately run prison could look like. That should change immediately.

Jamaica has 10 prisons housing more than 3,700 inmates. The best known of these are the ones at Tower Street and Spanish Town – old, red-brick structures, one of which, the latter, is heading for its 370th year. It was built soon after the British dislodged the Spanish from Jamaica in 1655. It was initially used as a barracoon for slaves. Tower Street, in downtown Kingston, was built in 1845, 179 years ago.

Not too much has changed with these prisons since they were constructed – and not much can be, in the context of what would be expected of a modern correctional facility.

A defining feature of the prisons is that they are overcrowded. Both are rated for around 700 inmates: Tower Street has 1,700 and Spanish Town, nearly 1,000.

UNFIT FOR HUMAN HABITATION

For decades, as this newspaper previously pointed out, experts in crime prevention, as well as human-rights advocates, have warned that the facilities are unfit for human habitation and create the kind where first-time and minor offenders are likely to be transformed into hardened criminals.

Indeed, in the early 1990s, a task force on crime, led by a former chief justice, the late Lensley Wolfe, highlighted the Dickensian environment of the prisons.

“Overcrowding abounds, sewage systems are primitive, to say the least, and are in an appalling condition,” the task force’s report said. “That both institutions have not experienced the outbreak of a serious epidemic is indeed a miracle.”

A decade later, the then UN rapporteur on human rights made similar observations, noting the prisons were “overcrowded, lack sanitary facilities and any meaningful opportunities for education, work and recreation”.

Last June, Linton Berry, who died three months after his release from 31 years in the St Catherine gaol, described the experience as “like living in hell”.

Other reports and surveys have arrived at similar conclusions, which have now been compounded by the damage to the facilities by the October earthquake. Indeed, as The Gleaner reported on Sunday, a post-earthquake analysis noted that the natural wear and tear of the prisons’ aged stonewall buildings was “exacerbated by the earthquake and heavy rains” afterwards.

For instance, at Tower Street, in several blocks, where 196 prisoners are housed, compromised structures posed “immediate danger to inmates and staff ”.

STRUGGLING TO REPAIR DAMAGE

The authorities are struggling to repair the damage and to find other facilities to lodge some of the maximum-security prisoners. That, even in the short term, is not a viable solution.

The real fix is what Jamaica ought to have done decades ago: build a prison that provides the balance between prison as punishment and rehabilitation.

In 2015 when the British government offered £25 million towards a modern prison, on the condition that Jamaicans in UK jails be allowed to serve the last period of their sentences at this facility, the idea was ridiculed by the current governing party, which was then in Opposition. Britain was offering jails rather than schools, it said.

In the nine years since then, the government has not been able to muster its own resources to build a prison. Neither is it clear what the government’s attitude is towards the BOOT proposal from the private investors. The administration is still crafting a business plan for a new prison.

Of course, there are many pros and cons with respect to privately operated prisons, which ought to be seriously discussed and debated so that the right regulatory arrangements are in place, in the event that Jamaica decides to go that route. There should not be a last-minute scramble in which important partners in this discourse feel they were left out or marginalised.

Jamaica cannot expect to fashion a respectful, gentler and caring society with 19th-century workhouses.