Online Feedback

Below are edited excerpts from comments posted by online readers to the article in yesterday's Gleaner, 'Jailhouse crisis', which stated that the Government was contemplating the establishment of a new lock-up facility at Up Park Camp, St Andrew, in the face of unprecedented overcrowding in all police lock-ups across the island.

• More jobs, not jails

Jamaica needs more jobs and career opportunities than jailhouse facilities.

Building more jails and not extraditing the problems that are causing the prisons to be so overcrowded will only lead to the building of more prisons and mad-house facilities. Poor people need good-paying jobs to take care of their needs.

- Africa06

• Constant Spring repeat?

After reading about the three young men who died in police custody at the Constant Spring lockup in 1992, and now hearing about an overcrowding at the police lock-ups across the island, I am wondering whether the Government has learned anything since then.

This present overcrowding situation facing the Government is beyond belief. This is clear proof that the new bail act doesn't work.

There are a lot of ex-police officers and some current ones, along with their supporters, who are encouraged by the mistreatment of prisoners, many of whom may be innocent. These instances of overcrowding in prisons is retrospective of the old slavery days, with our ancestors were packed together like sardines.

- David Gentles

• A sad situation

This saddens me. Of course, I believe that criminals should surely be punished. However, high incarceration rates will undoubtedly further harm the social health of our island.

What will the Government do to defuse this culture of crime? What is being done to eradicate the elements within the society that makes crime attractive? Something must be done about this crime problem immediately or Jamaica will be doomed.

- Jahmar

• Overhaul the system

The whole detention system needs an overhaul, as do the police stations on a whole, but one of my biggest concerns is the readmission of repeat offenders into the detention system and the issue of the process of rehabilitation. Are these areas being overlooked time and again, when they could be one of the root causes of this crime crisis we have found ourselves in?

- Klareview