In our Friday edition we carried a photo of two inmates of the Camp Street prison, one of whom was armed with a cutlass, about to attack a third in his cell. The photo was taken by another prisoner on his cellphone. The image, of course, is shocking in its impact, but it by no means depicts an isolated instance, as was confirmed by a prison officer to whom this newspaper spoke.
A particularly horrendous case in the New Amsterdam jail involving four inmates who were burned with acid and chopped with cutlasses came to public attention last year. That incident was made even more disquieting by the fact that a warder or warders may have been complicit, and that one of the victims had told prison officers beforehand about acid being brought into the jail. According to what was alleged at the time, following that report a search was made of all the cells, except that of the lead attacker.
As has been observed before by this newspaper, traditionally the prison service has come under far less scrutiny than the Guyana Police Force, and it is only when something dramatic happens that notice is taken of what might be going on in the country’s jails. The lack of public exposure, however, does not mean that all is well within the nation’s incarceration units. In fact, there is no evidence that even after the New Amsterdam experience, involving the hospitalization of some of the victims in Georgetown, the Ministry of Home Affairs made any fundamental changes to the administration of the prisons with a view to upgrading the systems and ensuring that they worked. An investigation, it was said, was held, but exactly what came out of that was never revealed.
As we reported in our Friday edition following the latest chopping case in Georgetown, a prison officer told this newspaper that he was concerned about the security of the staff, given that the perpetrators had the cutlass hidden in the Camp Street facility. “These guys know to stash things in places and on their person that you won’t dream,” we quoted him as saying”; “I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them emerge one day with a gun.” Well as we all know, that has happened already − on February 23, 2002 − and it wasn’t any ordinary gun either; it was an AK47. Following that disaster, measures were put in place to try and make the Camp Street prison more secure, but clearly the efforts were either in vain, or thirteen years down the road nobody bothers with them any longer.
The prison officer also told our reporter, “Whatever is on the road and you want it, they have it here. He was reported as saying, for instance, that while cellphones are prohibited they were in common use in the jail, and that charges to speak to people on the outside ranged from “food to favours.” It might be noted too, that last year we reported a source close to the New Amsterdam prison as telling us that there are warders who will bring in anything for a price, and that the going rate for a cutlass is $5,000 and a cellphone, $3,000.
Like the police force, of course, the prison service is known to be under strength, in addition to which the salaries are not of a kind that would attract a large number of potential recruits to apply for a post. As in the case of the police, therefore, one presumes that some of the officers (no doubt a minority) might be easily tempted to augment their wages. In more recent times, for example, a warder was charged with trafficking ganja inside the jail.
The prison officer who spoke to our reporter had no doubts that things needed to be tightened up. “There needs to be stricter security measures taken, even with staff,” he said, “because some of the things the guys have here, where do you think they got them?” Former Commissioner of Police Winston Felix too was certain where the problem lay, telling this newspaper, “Security is a personnel issue and prison officers must take it on as though their lives depend on it… all this nonsense about phones and weapons in the prison, it is because of their lack of vigilance.” While acknowledging that the warder to prisoner ratio had an impact on monitoring, he nevertheless maintained that the vigilance of officers was critical.
From the perspective of Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee, the matter of the prisons and the prison system is hardly a vote-getting issue, and he would feel no compulsion to comment on it, let alone to give updates on the security protocols put in place and the like. In an earlier period issues had been raised about conditions in the jails; the serious overcrowding, particularly in Camp Street; and the limitations of any possible programme for rehabilitation in such circumstances – presuming such still exists even at a very limited level. Other than a request to magistrates in respect of remand policies, however, no particular action seems to have followed.
There was a plan at one stage to build a new prison outside Georgetown, but nothing much came of that either. It would, of course, have been an immensely expensive undertaking, and there probably was not a great deal of enthusiasm on the part of government in the end to go through with it; potable water, the fixing of roads and the electrification of communities have far greater resonance with the public.
Nevertheless, the matter of penal reform and the upgrading and/or replacement of prison facilities will have to be addressed by whatever government is in office at some point. In the meantime, the current Minister and his Director of Prisons, Mr Welton Trotz, really have to pay attention to the protection of inmates. As mentioned above, one would have thought that following the New Amsterdam attacks, security at all the jails would have been looked at, so that at least cutlasses and acid and the like could not pass the prison walls, but clearly that has not happened.
While prisoners may have been convicted of a crime (a large number of those in Camp Street particularly, are on remand), their punishment handed down by the justice system does not include injury, maiming or death at the hands of other inmates. If the ministry and Mr Trotz cannot keep those detained at the pleasure of the state safe from attacks involving weaponry brought into the institution, then the system they are running has failed, and they have failed.