Editorial | Gov’t must tackle Justice Sykes’ report

Chief Justice Bryan Sykes has not said what he has done – apart from making it public – with the report by the committee he asked to look into the treatment of mentally ill people who come into conflict with the law.

We suspect that he forwarded a copy of the document to the justice minister, Delroy Chuck, and probably other ministries, agencies and officials with responsibility for, or connected to, law enforcement, criminal justice and public health.

Although none of these individuals or institutions would be under any obligation to respond to the report, and Justice Sykes has no power to have them pay attention to it, we are nevertheless surprised that the Andrew Holness administration has not yet acknowledged the report’s existence or said how it intends to proceed with it. It should. And with purpose.

Doing nothing would be a callous denial of justice to Noel Chambers, who, his 81-year-old body emaciated, carbuncled and cankerous, died in prison earlier this year. He had been held for 40 years, without trial, “at the pleasure of the court”.

Mr Chambers was unfit to plead.

Failure to act on the report would be a betrayal, too, of the many other people who, like Noel Chambers, because of their mental health condition, have fallen between the cracks of Jamaica’s law-enforcement and judicial systems.

For anyone who assumes otherwise, there will always be people like these who come into conflict with the law. As this newspaper recently reminded, three years ago a task force established by the health and wellness minister, Dr Christopher Tufton, concluded that up to a quarter of Jamaicans will, at some point in their lives, develop some form of mental illness. That is more than double the estimated global average, yet more than one and half times lower than the estimate of a duo of Jamaican researchers a dozen years ago.

MENTAL HEALTH EPIDEMIC

Jamaica has what, in other circumstances, may be considered a mental health epidemic. The specific reasons for its commissioning notwithstanding, the report of Justice Sykes’ committee should be viewed in that wider context and used as a fillip for urgent policy responses. In this regard, we hope for, and encourage, three broad approaches.

First, it should encourage Health Minister Tufton to more aggressively bring mental health to the centre of Jamaica’s public health initiatives. Despite his clear awareness of the problems, Dr Tufton’s 10-year strategic plan for the health sector, delivered more than a year ago, was, as we complained previously, light on the subject.

As might be expected of a document prepared by judges and lawyers, and triggered by problems manifested in the judicial, law-enforcement and correctional systems, the report of Justice Sykes’ team has the tone and texture of a court’s judgment, with resulting orders and dicta.

Prime Minister Holness should, therefore, urgently appoint a team, including Mr Chuck, Attorney General Marlene Malahoo Forte, National Security Minister Horace Chang and Dr Tufton, as well as their opposition counterparts – and such other technocrats as they might invite – to unpack the report’s observations, proposals and recommendations and place them in order of priority.

Oversight for the implementation of these recommendations should be assigned to the same committee that is to track the promises contained in the national consensus on crime.

EASY AND QUICK FIXES

However, there are some emergencies identified by Justice Sykes’ team that are impatient for action. The most important of these is the need for a forensic psychiatric facility for mentally ill persons who are in conflict with the law and in need of treatment. Prisons and lock-ups, as the committee said, are no place for them.

Bellevue Hospital in Kingston remains the only designated psychiatric facility. But no court-directed mentally ill person has been there for 40 years, since the last ones were ordered moved to regular prisons because of safety concerns. Bellevue, apparently, wasn’t appropriately designed for the role of a forensic psychiatric facility.

It might not be feasible, in the short run, to build a new, fit-for-purpose psychiatry facility that meets the needs of the judicial system. However, it cannot be beyond our capabilities to repurpose parts of Bellevue, or facilities elsewhere in the island, to mitigate the current crisis. The Government must get on it.

There are also a number of easy and quick fixes to existing laws, contained in the report, to simplify the test of a person who is fit to plead and to provide the courts with greater discretion to divert mentally ill people to processes more suitable to their condition, rather than the adversarial legal arrangement. These should be bundled and fast-tracked into law.