Editorial | Engage all stakeholders on new prison

Zavia Mayne, the junior national security minister, has promised to consult with the residents of Hartlands, St Catherine, before a new prison is built in their community.

“Consultations will be part of the process,” Mr Mayne told The Gleaner last week. “We just have not got to that process, yet. There are a number of consultations that will take place as we develop this facility.”

People generally do not like having prisons near where they live, so the unease of the Hartlands residents that one is planned for their community is understandable. In their case, the aversion is compounded by the fact that many people in the rural community believe that the 300 acres of land earmarked for the facility would be better used for farming to help promote Jamaica’s food security.

In that context, a full discussion with the residents which frankly explores the policy trade-offs that come with this, as it does with any project, is important. The sooner Mr Mayne and his direct boss, Horace Chang, get on with it, the better, notwithstanding Mr Mayne’s assertion that the project is still in the “early stages” of development.

TWO OBSERVATIONS

We offer two observations on this point. First, the Government has long settled on Hartlands as the site for the proposed prison to replace Jamaica’s crumbling, 18th-century, workhouse-type corrections facilities that have no place in a modern society. Indeed, a year ago, Dr Chang definitively told colleague legislators that SCJ Holdings, a state-owned company that controls the sugar estates, had made available the Hartlands acreage for the prison.

The second, and perhaps more important, is the consistent failure of Jamaica’s governments, across political administrations, to engage citizens early to help build consensus around policy. This shortcoming is often a major contributor to the failure of policies and projects that depend on public support. In other words, consulting the residents of Hartlands early is, in the long run, more likely to be a help than a hindrance.

The same principle applies at the national level with respect to the prison initiative more generally.

It is not yet clear who will finance, build, own and/or operate the new prison, although several months ago Dr Chang signalled that the Government wasn’t averse to seriously consider an unsolicited proposal from a private group to develop and manage such a facility. Nor does this newspaper, as we noted in these columns in December.

Indeed, we presume that the administration has decided, at least in principle, to proceed along the route of a private sector-developed and managed prison. Nothing in its J$11-billion budget for the Department of Correctional Services for the fiscal year that starts in April suggests that the Government’s financing of a new prison is in the offing.

CAN WORK

Despite their contrasting records around the world, privately developed and/or run prisons can work. Many do.

What is critical to the success of those that work – in the sense that they are not designed to merely squeeze money out of taxpayers, and do offer rehabilitation and not merely places of incarceration – is regulation and oversight. Which is why we previously encouraged the Government, even ahead of negotiations/discussions with potential private partners, to begin an engagement with domestic stakeholders to begin to craft what the regulatory regime for a private prison should be.

On the other hand, groups with an interest in the matter, including charities that work in prison and lobby for correctional reforms, need not wait for the Government’s invitation to begin to draft their proposed regulations for how privately run prisons should operate and what should be deliverables. Moreover, they should demand to be engaged.

Having a modern, decent prison that works well and helps to rehabilitate inmates ought not to be ridiculed as the airy-fairy preserve of do-gooders. It has value to the whole society.

Jamaica’s recidivism rate is above 40 per cent, and each year nearly 30 per cent of the prison intake is readmissions. And both the anecdotal evidence and prison surveys suggest that the conditions of Jamaica’s prisons contribute to recidivism – they entrench criminality.