NEWLY-APPOINTED Acting Commissioner of Corrections, Earl Fearon, has pledged to enhance the Department of Correctional Services' (DCS) response to problems with its inmate rehabilitation and staff development programmes.
Mr. Fearon, who took the position last Friday after former Commissioner Lt. Colonel John Prescod did not renew his contract last year, said that this thrust will be the department's overall strategic goal and is intended to be achieved by 2007.
A series of embarrassing events over the last three years has brought the DCS under severe criticism from local and international human rights groups.
Just before he left, Lt. Colonel Prescod made a last effort to show serious commitment to the rehabilitation of prisoners by the designing a National Rehabilitation Strategy. The new strategy, aimed at creating a new image, proposed to find ways of correcting critical deficiencies among the staff, inmates, and overall administration of the DCS.
This came, as incidents between 1999 and 2001 included 800 warders being interdicted, hundreds of inmates being beaten by soldiers and warders at the St. Catherine Adult Correctional Centre in Spanish Town and in 2001 and it was revealed that hundreds of mentally ill persons who had not been found guilty of a crime were languishing in the island's prisons.
While hailing his predecessor as a "visionary with extraordinary and indomitable spirit", in an address to members of staff on his first day of the new position in Friday, Mr Fearon described his appointment as an executive call to provide the quest for wise compassionate leadership and promised to serve the organisation and country by providing effective leadership.
"My leadership style will focus on interpersonal leadership, a prescription for empowering you to aspire to be effective leaders, competent managers and highly capable workers", he said. "This will be carried out by the effective leadership of myself and others within the DCS staff, the client system of all inmates in the adult correctional centres, wards in the juvenile correctional centres, the clients in the community and the private voluntary partnership services spread across the island."
Mr Fearon said that he would bring a fresh approach to the department that would enable all staff to maintain their integrity and realise personal and professional goals.
He said that the way forward has been planned, and is "being fine-tuned for delivery through a transitional management process with teams at all levels obtaining a buy-in." He said that Lt. Colonel Prescod's eight years was an "inspired and positive leadership", and that while at the helm, Lt. Colonel Prescod "ably analysed" the organisation, and through shared vision and mission realigned the department on the path of rehabilitation, enabling the offenders to re-integrate in the society as law abiding citizens.
