Editorial | Accountability at the prisons

IN RESPONSE to the recent viral video of prisoners at the St Catherine Adult Correctional Centre imbibing expensive liquor and partying in their cells, Prime Minister Andrew Holness promised a crackdown on the partygoers, who, he said, despite their incarceration “feel ... they are free”.

“I happen to know that that incident, and other such incidents, will be dealt with seriously in the correctional services,” said Mr Holness.

Implicit in Mr Holness’ remark was an admission that fetes, such as that captured in the video and posted online, are not unknown, or even uncommon, in Jamaica’s prisons. Which raises the obvious questions of how inmates at a supposedly maximum-security facility obtained the drinks that swirled at their fete, got the non-prison clothes some of them wore, and acquired the mobile phone that was used to make the video and those that prisoners often use to make calls to people on the outside, sometimes to deliver orders to lieutenants in criminal enterprises.

People’s outrage over what they saw on the Internet, including on various social media platforms, triggered another of the sporadic sweeps at the St Catherine facility for contraband, and a declaration by Mr Holness’ minister without portfolio in the Ministry of National Security, Matthew Samuda, of the Government’s commitment “to reducing the opportunities for corruption in the DCS (Department of Correctional Services)”.

Mr Samuda appeared to pin his hope for having corruption-free prisons on a new correctional services law, which is to be taken to Parliament before the first half of next year. “There will be provisions ensuring that our correctional officers receive the tools to effectively carry out their duties,” Mr Samuda said.

What those tools are, Mr Samuda did not say. While a new law may have some efficacy in improving oversight of the prisons, fundamentally, Mr Samuda will not be able to legislate effective management and leadership. Moreover, it does not need a new law to hold the people accountable for how they do their jobs.

In this matter, the person from whom surprisingly little has been heard, except for the fact that he called for the search of the jail, is Gary Rowe, the former Jamaica Defence Force lieutenant colonel who is the commissioner of corrections, a post he has been in for 20 months.

We do not claim that Lt Col Rowe’s job is easy. He presides over, as this newspaper has said many times – including less than three weeks ago – overcrowded and decrepit, 18th-century jails, a large number of whose inmates are hardcore criminals. Indeed, of the 1,094 people who were sent to prison in 2019, 444, or approximately 41 per cent, were repeat offenders. Of this number, 304, roughly 28 per cent, had been to jail before.

Further, the conditions of Jamaica’s prisons, despite the nods, here and there, to modernity and some attempts at rehabilitation, remain appallingly Dickensian. The environment, the experts say, feeds recidivism.

The Government agrees that there is a need for a modern prison that is better suited to rehabilitation, which is expected of these times. It, however, does not have the money to build one, having, in a grasp for partisan political advantage, snootily turned down a British scheme that would have helped to finance a new facility. The country’s current economic circumstance makes it unlikely that a new prison will be affordable in the short term.

That, however, does not mean that the existing facilities should not be properly managed, or that they should be rife with corruption and without rigorous oversight. They may, indeed, have all these. It is just that the public does not feel it.

Government Committed to Reducing Corruption

Mr Samuda has said that the Government is committed to reducing opportunities for corruption in the correctional services with his proposed new law, which will be welcomed. But even as we look forward to what he offers, we understand that the correctional services has fewer prison warders than its leaders say is the optimum and appreciate the dangers of the job. However, we remain convinced that better can be done even now.

There are fewer than 4,000 inmates in the prisons. And the maximum-security facilities, adult correctional centres in St Catherine and Tower Street in Kingston, despite their overcrowding, are relatively small ‘communities’, which should not be difficult to monitor, no matter how systemic Mr Samuda claims the problem to be. Neither should it be too hard for resolved leaders, with the backing of committed policymakers, to identify and weed out corrupt warders.

In this regard, Lt Col Rowe should account to the public for what he has done during his tenure to address these issues, and how he has held the head of each facility accountable. Mr Samuda, as the point man on prisons in the national security ministry, is also under an obligation of accountability. His direct boss, Horace Chang, and Prime Minister Holness, should have something more substantive to say on this matter.

Indeed, Dr Chang, Mr Samuda, Lt Col Rowe and their subordinates should be called before Parliament’s Internal Affairs and Human Resources and Social Development committees to explain their performance, how they plan to manage the prisons going forward, and their policies thereto. They must demonstrate that they are up to task.