Editorial | Move prisons past Dickensian-era workhouses

In his interview with this newspaper last week, Linton Berry didn’t go into the minutiae of the conditions in which he lived for more than three decades at the Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre in downtown Kingston.

He said sufficient, however, to confirm what is well known about Jamaican prisons: that they are largely like Dickensian-era workhouses.

“It is like living in hell,” Mr Berry, 71, said days after being paroled from his life sentence for murder. “One of my missions will be to advise people, especially the youth, to keep out of trouble.”

That is a mission this newspaper supports, and which we hope Mr Berry can pursue with energy and success. But while prisons are places that people should want to avoid and part of the reasons for incarceration is punishment, they oughtn’t to be hellholes, with little capacity for rehabilitation.

In that regard, the glimpse Mr Berry provided into his time in jail was a reminder of Jamaica’s need for a modern correctional facility, about which the administration has become notably quiet, notwithstanding last year’s proposal by private interests to build, own and operate a new correctional facility. Horace Chang, the national security minister, didn’t mention the matter in his report to Parliament on his portfolio last month during the sectoral debate.

Yet, as numerous surveys, reports and analyses have concluded, and Mr Berry implied, prisons like the one at which he was incarcerated often help transform new or inexperienced offenders into hardened criminals, as well as encourage cynicism among those who are already in the clutches of criminality.

DICKENS’ NOVEL

Three decades ago, the Wolfe Task Force on crime, chaired by the late chief justice Lensley Wolfe, painted a picture of Jamaica’s prisons that might have been plucked off the pages of a Dickens’ novel.

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

A decade after Wolfe, the UN’s Rapporteur on Human Rights reported that Jamaica’s prisons were “overcrowded, lack sanitary facilities and any meaningful opportunities for education, work and recreation”.

The UN report also noted that “basic amenities, such as electricity, medical treatment and the use of toilets, depend on the goodwill of warders”.

There were also, it said, “credible complaints” by prisoners of being beaten by warders.

Then a 2018 Inter-American Development Bank-supported survey of prisoners found that “49.9 per cent had personal belongings stolen while in prison … 19.1 per cent reported being attacked or beaten, and 82.2 per cent witnessed the attack or beating of another inmate”.

“The main perpetrators of attacks against other prisoners were prison staff (87.1 per cent)...” the report claimed.

The situation may have improved a bit in recent years. Mr Berry praised the efforts of individual staff.

Many of the deficiencies, including the attitudes of warders, the inadequacy of medical care and diet and the fact that the mentally ill often get lost in the system, are deeply systemic. Additionally, there is just so much that can be done, short of totally gutting them, to transform to modern correctional facilities buildings that were constructed more than two centuries ago.

START AFRESH

Jamaica needs to start afresh.

Having rejected a British government offer of financial support for the construction of a prison in exchange for allowing Jamaicans time in UK jails to end their terms here (the fine details of the proposal were not reported) the current administration pledged to fund the project on its own.

Unfortunately, the government has been unable to find the capital, estimated at between J$25 billion and J$50 billion, for a facility to accommodate over 3,000 adults, as well as an annex for hundreds of juveniles.

Last year, a private group made an unsolicited offer to build and run the prison – a model used in several countries – apparently on the basis that it would be paid what the government then allocated to the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) – J$11.7 billion. The rates would be adjusted periodically.

There are legitimate questions to be asked about privately run prisons, some of which have attempted to maximise profit over the welfare of the society and the good of the people in their care. Indeed, the US federal government has been retreating from the system.

Their known shortcomings, however, doesn’t mean that private prisons can’t work, especially if subjected to robust regulation and keen oversight. It is surprising, therefore, that the government hasn’t, as we proposed several months ago, initiated, via the relevant parliamentary committee, a substantive public discussion on the matter. This debate would help to identify potential kinks as well as propose solutions and craft the outlines of a regulatory framework for a private prison, in the context of the peculiarities of Jamaica’s circumstances. That should happen even before any offer is subject to a public tender.

Maybe a privately developed and managed prison isn’t suitable for Jamaica. But at least, we should seriously talk about it. Any discussion shouldn’t, as too often the case with policy questions, be a bit of a last-minute rush – an afterthought, almost.