Editorial | Regulation is key to private prison

This newspaper welcomes the Holness administration’s willingness to seriously consider the proposal for a privately developed and operated prison, but with a proviso.

The Government must simultaneously, or even ahead of any negotiations with the project’s proposers, engage relevant civil society/human rights organisations on crafting appropriate regulatory structure for private prisons.

In fact, groups that already lobby for prison reform oughtn’t to await invitations from the administration. They should begin to draft their own recommendations, including, in the interim, oversight of the Department of Correctional Services (DCS), which runs Jamaica’s prisons.

There is no question that Jamaica needs a modern, decent prison. As myriad analyses of the existing facilities have pointed out, that they were never fit for purpose, as places not just of punishment, but also rehabilitation. Indeed, the two major prisons, in Kingston and Spanish Town, are 19th-century facilities, which would find a place as workhouses in Dickens novels.

Nearly three decades ago, in 1993, the Wolfe Task Force on crime in Jamaica said of the prisons: “Overcrowding abounds, sewage systems are primitive, to say the least, and are in an appalling condition. That both institutions have not experienced the outbreak of a serious epidemic is indeed a miracle.”

Yet, a decade later, Manfred Nowak, then UN rapporteur on human rights, reported that the facilities were “overcrowded, lack sanitary facilities, and any meaningful opportunities for education, work and recreation”.

“In addition,” the Nowak said, “basic amenities, such as electricity, medical treatment and the use of toilets, depend on the goodwill of warders. I also found credible complaints by prisoners of beatings by the officers.”

A 2011 a report for the Death Penalty Project similarly arrived at the conclusion that “conditions in Jamaica’s prisons continue to fall far short of basic standards”.

MARGINAL IMPROVEMENTS

Since then, there have been marginal improvements for the approximately 3,600 inmates. A 2018 survey, with a sample of over 700 prisoners, found that inmates were allowed frequent baths and had access to sanitary requirements and healthcare. But overcrowding persisted. The majority of prisoners in this Inter-American Development Bank-supported study complained of dirty toilets and poor food.

Notably, however, the vast majority (approximately 82 per cent) didn’t feel as safe in prison as where they lived before incarceration.

Said the report: “Of the respondents, 49.9 per cent had personal belongings stolen while in prison, including clothes and shoes, 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), while the main perpetrators of personal attacks were other inmates (62.3 per cent).”

Inmates also identified significant levels of drug and alcohol use in the facilities.

Official Jamaica government data, reported by the Planning Institute of Jamaica’s (PIOJ) Economic and Social Survey, puts the island’s recidivism rate at 41 per cent. The agency also reported that of the approximately 900 people admitted to prison last year, 28 per cent were readmissions.

The recidivism rate reported by the PIOJ – measured as people who had previously received custodial and non-custodial sentences – was a percentage point below that noted in the 2018 report. However, the Government’s expectation by this time was for the rate of reoffending to fall below 40 per cent, to reach 10 per cent by 2030.

In the period since 2018, the rate of readmission appears to have risen. Said the IDB report: “...The research found that 20.6 per cent of the respondents had previously been imprisoned for another crime and that 16.2 per cent were previously incarcerated in a juvenile detention centre.”

SKILLS TRAINING

And it seems, too, that Jamaica is not too good at getting its prisoners to enrol for skills training. The 2021/22 PIOJ report indicated that 863 of adult inmates (approximately 24 per cent of prisoners) were engaged in vocational programmes. The 2018 survey found that “47.4 per cent were involved in an educational programme”.

“Of the respondents involved in technical/vocational training, 91.8 per cent believed that it would prove very useful or quite useful once they are released,” the IDB report noted.

The bottom line is, as has long been known, the environment of Jamaica’s prisons are more likely to exacerbate, and harden, the very attitudes that caused inmates to be in jail, rather than rehabilitate them. Indeed, Jamaica’s high rate of recidivism underlines the fact.

But the 2018 survey findings on what prisoners in vocational training think of their prospects hints at what is possible. Moreover, while people in prison are, for a period, legally deprived of certain freedoms, they do not totally surrender their dignity and fundamental humanity, which the Jamaican State is bound to respect.

But it is clear that it cannot deliver on its universal obligations in the context of what exists at the Tower Street, St Catherine or South Camp correctional centres.

Yet, the Government has for too long dithered over the construction of a modern facility that would afford the country a chance to live up to its obligations.

There is perhaps an opportunity now to break the cycle. Given the country’s tough fiscal situation, the administration might otherwise be challenged for prioritising building a prison over schools, which, unfortunately, the party now in government once swung as a populist political cudgel against its opponents when Britain offered financial support for a correctional facility.

A private sector build-own-operate-transfer (BOOT) facility is a potential public/private sector partnership that navigates those hurdles.

There are many obvious questions about any such arrangement, against the backdrop of some greedy private operators in other jurisdictions who sought to maximise profit over the society’s welfare. The clear response to this behaviour is a robust regulatory regime with strong and independent oversight.

Moreover, investing in a correctional facility that isn’t an assembly line for criminals will have the return of lessening the country’s crime problem.