On January 29, 2002, Chairman of the Bar Council of England and Wales, Lord Daniel Brennan QC, told the Guyana media at a press briefing that he had recommended the Brickdam lockups be “locked up and closed.” As well he might. He had been speaking at the end of a visit here aimed at improving the judicial system, and among other things had toured the Camp Street jail as well as the lockups.
True to form, nothing seems to have been done about Brickdam after that, and today the lockups at that location remain the same foul, evil-smelling, insanitary hell-holes they always were. In fact, they might even be in a worse state than when Lord Brennan visited. As far as can be established the last time they had any attention was in 1999, when then Minister of Home Affairs Ronald Gajraj closed them so they could be renovated.
Anyone who had the stomach to read our reports on Brickdam in our editions of October 27 and last Sunday would have been appalled. What former inmates have described belongs more properly to conditions of incarceration in the seventeenth century than in the twenty-first. Last week a push-cart operator who had the misfortune to spend four days in the lockups after getting into an altercation with another push-cart man, told this newspaper that there were two toilets in the facility, both of which could not be used because they were overflowing. There were cells, he said, which were not utilised for the purpose for which they were intended because they had become toilets, and were filled with faeces and urine. The front of these cells only, apparently, is cleaned every day by a young man who sprinkles some pungent smelling disinfectant, but that hardly begins to address the extent of the problem.
Needless to say, the stench is unbearable. In our October 27 issue we reported a young professional who had been held there as saying: “The first thing that hits you is the stench. It is a smell that no human being should have to experience. The smell is so unbearable that it causes your eyes to water and your skin to burn.” There are, in addition, no lights and bed is the bare concrete − and in this instance − unhygienic floor. The cart-operator told our reporter that detainees were only allowed one small drink bottle of water with which to wash themselves, and anyone who didn’t have a bottle simply had to go unwashed. The thing that upset him most, he said, was that the morning tea was served to detainees in the same bucket which was used to clean the cells. It was dished out from an enamel cup into a detainee’s bottle, and if they had no bottle – then no tea.
Now if all of this – and more which will not be repeated here – does not make the average citizen feel immediately nauseous, then there is little hope for us. And while the Brickdam lockups are the “worst of the worst,” Alliance For Change Leader Raphael Trotman told this newspaper that all the lockups were in a “terrible state,” while PNCR MP Debbie Backer described most of them as being “absolutely filthy.” This includes, it seems, the female lockups and those used for juveniles.
The first thing that has to be said is that lockups are not for those who have been convicted; they are for people who have been detained by the police, and who may or may not be charged. In fact, with the wrong combination of circumstances it is conceivable that ordinary law-abiding members of the public could find themselves by mistake locked up in Brickdam for a night or so. Ms Backer said that while the constitution provided for persons to be held for up to 72 hours without charge, the police did not have to detain them that long if they were still investigating a matter, and could place them on station bail and tell them to return the next morning. The night the young professional was in the lockups there, for example, it was crowded with 83 detainees, many of whom, one suspects, could have been on station bail. And as for the push-cart operator, he spent four days there before being charged and fined $5,000 by a magistrate. His offence was not serious enough, one would have thought, not to have put him on station bail instead.
Given the filth and the overcrowding, it is no surprise to learn that bullying goes on and assaults take place with no interference from the police. But when human beings find themselves in circumstances of such utter degradation, the most basic of social constraints disappear, and there will be no inhibitions. No one should be surprised in the circumstances that the social organization inside the lockups has more the character of a ‘Lord of the Flies’ situation – if not worse − than anything else.
It is an insult to a human being to hold him in the conditions described above, no matter what he may be suspected of having done, and it is, needless to say, an infringement of his human rights. It is also an insult to the members of society as a whole, who take it for granted that the authorities will maintain minimum standards of hygiene and civilization in the detention centres under their control. What kind of image is it that is being projected in our name, that those detained by law enforcement who are either innocent, or at worst potentially guilty, have to be incarcerated in a facility which has more in common with a mediaeval dungeon that it does with modern lockups.
It must be said, however, that Brickdam and similar facilities are also an insult to the police who have to work there every day. Here we have the government engaged in security sector reform , and yet no one seems to have spared a thought for the working conditions of the GPF. How can they possibly be expected to apply professional standards when they have to lock men up in a glorified latrine? Leaving aside for the moment the officers detailed to guard the lockups themselves, it is impossible that the smell emanating from these does not penetrate at least some of the other working areas of Brickdam, affecting the police who are based there, and perhaps members of the public who come into the station. At the very minimum, the place is a major health hazard, both for the men being held and the police who are responsible for them. It can only be a matter of luck that there has been no epidemic in the facility before this.
Degradation, as already suggested, breeds callousness and inhumanity. Over the years there have been well documented cases of detainees in the lockups dying, allegedly following a beating by the police. But as said above, it is that much more difficult to ensure the police adhere to professional standards if they themselves are not being treated professionally by the authorities – although that in and of itself does not excuse the brutalization which they are responsible for in the cells. But to reiterate: it demeans the humanity of the police themselves to require them to operate such a facility, and not just humanity of the men who have been detained.
The state of the nation’s lockups should be a matter of concern to Minister Ramsammy on health grounds, and in the case of the juvenile and women’s facilities, to Minister Manickchand. But of course the ultimate responsibility lies with Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee, who despite several attempts declined to speak to this newspaper on the matter − he was not “prepared to speak on the state of the police lockups,” he said. Well he should be, and he owes it to the public to do so. They are not just a national scandal, but they are also a national embarrassment. Something needs to be done about them, and done quickly.
