The Editor, Sir:
On Sunday 24th April, 2005, I heard the following statement from the most unlikely source 'Prisoners have no rights'. This statement was repeated and so it was no slip of the tongue. This seems to be the common view of many persons but it is not the Law of the land. Prisoners do have rights and a cursory walk through the Laws will demonstrate without the shadow of a doubt that prisoners do have rights.
Firstly, persons in custody awaiting trial are not prisoners but are persons on remand and that is why such persons are kept at The Horizon Adult Remand Centre on Spanish Town Road or at one of the several police-lock ups through the island.
tried, convicted
and sentenced
Secondly, prisoners are those persons who have been tried, convicted and sentenced by a court to a term of imprisonment [either with or without the alternative of the payment of a fine] and such persons are housed at one or other of the Correctional Centres formerly called prisons such as the General Penitentiary (Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre) or Fort Augusta Adult Correctional Centre.
When an accused person is on remand or when a defendant has been convicted and sentenced to a term of imprisonment, the only right that person loses or forfeits is The Right to Liberty but he or she remains possessed of all the other human rights which are protected by the Constitution of Jamaica which would make good reading for all those who support the view that prisoners have no rights.
rights
It is precisely because prisoners do have rights why even though some have been convicted and sentenced to death for murder, the State has been unable to carry out that sentence as the prisoners by virtue of one of the rights have appealed right up to the highest Court [for now] i.e. the Privy Council which court 'put a spanner in the works'. It is because prisoners do have rights why some persons are still awaiting sentence even though they have been convicted. The judges have no right to sentence them until the appropriate Law has been enforced.
Prisoners do have rights and we ignore these rights to our peril.
I am, etc.,
VELMA L. HYLTON, Q.C.
P.O. Box 36
Spur Tree,
Manchester
