IN 1995 the Appeal Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to detain juveniles and mentally ill prisoners at the Governor-General's pleasure. A lawyer pointed out at the time that an inherent danger is that a person so detained ran the risk of being forgotten.
The risk pertains to those deemed 'unfit to plead'; but other inmates have also been forgotten. That was the fate of Mr. Ivan Barrows who was freed last week at age 76 having spent 29 years in jail for breaking a pane of glass at a bank an offence for which the maximum term is three years.
Incredibly this case is not an isolated one. Commissioner of Corrections Lt. Col, John Prescod conceded last week that some 150 other inmates are similarly confined in various prisons all presumably deemed 'unfit to plead'. And there are another 25 'mentally challenged' awaiting the Governor-General's pleasure, the status deemed by the Appeal Court to be unconstitutional.
These forgotten ones are victims of creaking bureaucracy. This ranges from what the authorities now say is a shortfall in psychiatric personnel in the prisons to the snail's pace of the court system. But there is also unexplained inaction at the level of Parliament itself.
In the wake of the Appeal Court ruling there was an abortive attempt at amending the provision relating to detention at the Governor-General's pleasure. After the House of Representatives passed the requisite amendment in March last year it was challenged in the Senate on the constitutional ground that imposing a life sentence instead is a function of the judiciary.
Since then Parliament has taken no further action. And so the forgotten prisoners languish in a twilight zone of mental disability and official neglect.
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