More of a quaint, 19th century, Victorian heritage site than a national maximum security penitentiary, the Mazaruni Prison has once again become the scene of an escape of some of its desperate inmates.
Situated on the northern bank of the Mazaruni River and built in 1845 as a maximum-security prison, the Mazaruni Prison is ancient in appearance, insecure in structure, understaffed in management, and sprawling in area. The out-of-sight Prison has been out-of-mind of the Ministry of Home Affairs which seems not to understand the menace that a major escape of dangerous prisoners could pose to the community at large.
But only a decade ago on 7 August 1997, the same Mazaruni Prison was the scene of Guyana’s most destructive prison riot in which four dormitories were burnt to the ground. Piqued over the imposition of curfew time, prisoners staged a major insurrection, arming themselves with tools from the prison shed and lighting fires. As the riot erupted, the outnumbered squad of wardens could do no more than secure escape routes until police and military reinforcements arrived. The lessons of insufficient staffing seem not to have been learnt.
Again, in November 2005, five dangerous prisoners broke out of the same Mazaruni Prison after ripping out wooden bars on their cell doors and simply cutting the compound’s chain-link fence. They were all captured shortly afterwards but the lessons of rickety structures seem not to have been learnt.
This time, Director of Prisons Dale Erskine explained, nine unarmed prisoners overpowered the guards, walked through the gate, scaled the fence and vanished into the bush, a direct consequence of poor staffing and weak security structures.
The Guyana Prison Service has complained repeatedly to the Ministry of Home Affairs that its security equipment does not match the security needs to deal with desperate and dangerous inmates who are capable of causing escapes, fires and riots. The increasing numbers and changing character of the prisoners necessitate increased staffing, fortified prisons, improved communication systems and advanced technology, including monitoring cameras and scanners, to prevent or suppress disorder.
The Mazaruni Prison need not be a menace; if rehabilitated and expanded, it offers the best prospect not only for relieving the congestion at the Georgetown Prison but also for producing food through agriculture; for engaging prisoners in constructive activities as a form of training and rehabilitation, and for providing a safe environment for citizens far away from population centres.
The Mazaruni Prison has only 361 convicts but the warden-inmate ratio is a scant 1:40, not sufficient to supervise farm labour much less quell a major riot or prevent breakout. As the prison population grows, there ought to be a commensurate increase in the number of prison officers who are now about 20 per cent below the authorised strength. Even that level, set some time ago, is out of date yet has never been realized.
Despite mounting evidence of the menace of disorder, the administration has done little over the past decade to correct the dangerous physical and personnel problems that plague the Prison Service. Public funding for the strengthening of the country’s jails has been paltry, suggesting an interest in no more than stop-gap measures.
Seemingly oblivious to the grave implications of the continuing shortages of prison officers and the far-too-frequent breakouts of prisoners, the only remedy Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee could recommend was “that staffing is always under review.”
