Thinking outside the (prison) box

By Garth A. Rattray

We are about to construct another prison to incarcerate (punish, keep behind bars and walls, house, feed, maintain and try to rehabilitate) some who run afoul of the law.

Jamaica has severe economic problems. We know that the number of our transgressors have long ago outgrown our prisons and will rapidly outgrow this proposed facility. We have serious and chronic deficiencies with our existing rehabilitation programmes. We have unacceptable recidivism rates. We are unable to achieve a low crime rate; it therefore appears to me that this new facility will be yet another extremely expensive construction used to house convicts and offer little or no discernable return on our 'investment'.

To some people prison is an improvement on their lot in life. To some, it is as if they relocated from one environment to a similar one. Some were already imprisoned by ignorance, poverty and community violence, so prison is restrictive but is seen as a reprieve from their daily life-threatening struggles.

Others see prison as a learning experience that they wear like a badge of honour. Only an indeterminate few leave prison more or less reformed. Several leave prison scared but they are not necessarily reformed.

I have always opined and proffered that all convicts should be made to apologise to their victims or to the relatives of their victims as an essential part of their sentence. They should be required to perform some sort of restitution and be productive to society in some way. Prison should not simply be an attempt at deterrence or society's way of exacting punishment, retaliation and revenge. Convicts need to realise that they are paying a debt - being removed from society and locked up behind concrete and steel is surely no way to truly do so.

Make them work

I am aware that there are existing rehabilitation programmes within the prison system but another way of rehabilitation is for some convicts to give back to society, to provide a service and to experience some of what it means to be humane by helping others in dire need of assistance.

We have a growing population of elderly and/or disabled citizens who need care. Convicts who require minimal security and are low flight risk should be trained and used to assist with our ailing fellow Jamaicans. The assistance could vary from keeping their company and assisting them with their activities of daily living to nursing care for the bed-ridden.

This could be done outside the walls as a day-release programme (for the very trusted) specifically for this service or it could be done in facilities annexed to a prison (a genuine rehabilitation centre) constructed for that purpose.

We need to change the insular way that we deal with crime - it cannot be mostly about policing. We should assemble a cadre of people recruited from every ministry and legislate a new sub-ministry charged with the sole purpose of organising crime-fighting policies and actions. Their task would be to use their combined resources (drawn from every ministry), and expertise to target crime from every angle. In effect, they would use resources from all the ministries and refocus them specifically to provide assistance, guidance, counselling, amenities, know-how, scholarships, small loans and perhaps jobs in order to fight crime from the root and not only when the diseased and bitter fruit has already burst forth.

If we succeed in co-ordinating the various ministries and in getting offenders to understand that they are indebted to their victims and to society and must make amends; if we succeed in offering and in imbuing offenders with some modicum of humaneness and caring for others, the long-term effect on our communities and society on a whole will be extraordinarily beneficial.

Garth A. Rattray is a medical doctor with a family practice. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and garthrattray@gmail.com