Dear Editor,
In the late ʼ90s with the cooperation of the prison management, I conducted a self-sponsored Art course that resulted in two inmates proceeding to institutions of higher learning and another branching off to perfect his unique skills in model building; yet another is now an ardent producer of craft products. I had also written to the then Home Affairs Minister Ronald Gajraj on behalf of an inmate who I knew was constantly in prison before I had left school as a teenager for ridiculous offences. A representative from the ministry visited me during class ‒ I think his name was Mr Green ‒ however, with the support of Mr Dale Erskine the then Director of Prisons, this inmate was released. He did begin to pursue an Art career, but I advised him to get a job and develop his skill in his spare time. This he did, and as far as I know he held on to his job and was still employed a few years ago when I saw him. That course could not have happened without the vision of Mr Erskine and his team that included Mr Howard.
These men were in 1997-98 faced with severe problems, which only the unwilling state could start solving. They were forced to deploy female guards where only males had been deployed before; cells designed for three inmates were now housing four and five prisoners. Though prisoners would ascend to the roof in protest at the very long waits for trial, among other contentions, the PPP government remained unmoved. Andrew Douglas, one of the famous 2002 jailbreak inmates became popular before the jailbreak because of his jail roof protests. It was then Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee following Ronald Gajraj who asked rhetorically in response to requests from stakeholders and the British High Commissioner for reforms at the Brickdam lockups and the Georgetown Prison, whether the prisoners thought they were in a five star hotel. The British High Commissioner did eventually in 2007 present the prison authorities with a £5,000 cheque, but the problem had long extended far beyond the parameters of that good intention.
In my article on Sunday, March 6 in the Guyana Chronicle, I outlined the collapse and decimation of mass semi-skilled muscle-based employment centres in Georgetown between 1987 and 1991, and when the PPP came to power in 1992, they ignored those social traumas, and out of political spite they further destroyed the National Service, a powerful training centre that provided skills training for thousands of Guyanese youth. Imagine that Mr Rohee today does not know that the Timehri Prison from its inception in the early seventies was designed as a young offenders facility, and thinks that he is now suggesting it. The PPP is a 1960s political fossil, and its propaganda arm was effective in carrying out its bottom-house philosophies.
If the propaganda arm articulated a common PPP contempt for the responsibility of prison reform in Georgetown then it would be rational to say that the very similar PPP’s neglect of the city coincides with the consistent small minded attitude of spiting the constituency that rejected them. Why was Gladwin Samuels reinstated under their watch after his court case relating to the beating of a prisoner was dismissed?
Yours faithfully,
Barrington Braithwaite
