Finally! Police to start removing minors from lock-ups
Published:Sunday | August 7, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Tyrone Reid, Staff Reporter
The police are set to begin a drive tomorrow to remedy the long-standing malady of holding minors in their lock-ups for more than two days.
Gloria Thompson, policy officer at the Office of the Children's Advocate (OCA), has revealed that between Monday and Thursday of this week, scores of minors are scheduled to be shipped out of the decrepit police lock-ups, many of which are unfit for adults, and moved to the recently opened juvenile facility on Metcalfe Street in Denham Town that was designed specifically to house minors.
"We are encouraged by this," said Thompson who pointed out that this move should definitely help to improve the country's human-rights record.
She revealed that as at August 4, this year, some 99 minors were being held in police lock-ups across the island.
The State's drive to comply with laws it has sworn to uphold will be get under way with nine minors from the Area Two police division being taken to the cleaner facilities at Metcalfe Street tomorrow.
Group transfers
Thompson disclosed that that number should be followed by another batch of nine minors on Tuesday from the Area Four police Division. On Wednesday, she said, the biggest batch - 22 minors - should be making its way to the Denham Town-based facility from police lock-ups in area one.
Thompson also reported that Thursday should see another 17 minors, taken from cells in Kingston and St Andrew, being shuttled to Metcalfe Street.
According to the OCA's policy officer, only new cases and detainees will remain in the police lock-ups until they are brought before the courts.
Retired Children's Advocate Mary Clarke often chided the State for breaking its own laws. Despite her several protestations in public and behind closed doors, Clarke retired without seeing one of her main concerns addressed. More than a year ago, during one of Clarke's broadside on the government, human-rights group Jamaicans for Justice told The Sunday Gleaner that it was willing to throw its weight behind the OCA if it decided to take the Government to court over the perennial issue.
Thompson told The Sunday Gleaner that the move to address the situation is being spearheaded by the Detention and Courts Division of the Jamaica Constabulary Force. She also lauded the efforts of the Department of Correctional Services for its role in the plans to move the minors to the Metcalfe Street facility. Efforts to get a comment from Lieutenant Colonel Sean Prendergast, acting commissioner of corrections, were unsuccessful. Calls placed to his cellphone went straight to voicemail.
Thompson also mentioned that boys from the Stony Hill Remand Centre and a few special cases from the lock-up at the Admiral Town Police Station account for the lion's share of the current population at the Metcalfe Street facility.