Having endured four weeks under appalling conditions at the New Amsterdam Women’s Prison, former inmate Felicity Benjamin wants to highlight the atrocities she endured so that change can be wrought, while also urging young women to stay out of trouble to avoid being sent there.
For Benjamin the experience was worse than she could have ever imagined. Apart from having to share a single bathroom and toilet with dozens of women, she said the meals were of such poor quality as to make one sick.
The mother of two teenagers was on February 10 sentenced to one month in prison by a city magistrate after being continuously battered by a neighbour. While she was slapped with three charges, he faced one. They were both found guilty and sentenced to one month in prison, by the same magistrate.
Days after she completed her sentence, a visibly distressed Benjamin sat down with the Sunday Stabroek to tell her life-changing story. She said she was very vocal about many issues while in prison and this made her a target. “I am out now so I really don’t care,” she stated.
She recounted being unable to sleep because her bunk rocked violently as two women engaged in sexual acts in the one above. She said she was also an unwilling witness to these acts being performed.
Benjamin spoke of getting high from marijuana smoke being constantly blown in her face by other inmates. “Them girls smoke them weed… They blow it in meh face,” she said, adding that when she raised this with the Matron of the prison she was threatened. Benjamin’s expose comes at a time when the conditions of the prison system are under intense scrutiny. If given the opportunity, she wants to recount her experience before the ongoing Commission of Inquiry (CoI), since in addition to looking at the recent prison riot which claimed 17 lives, the inquiry will also look into conditions at other prisons.
Director of Prisons Carl Graham told this publication that he was aware of Benjamin’s grievances. She had visited Prison Headquarters on Brickdam to lodge an official complaint.
According to Graham, a statement was taken from Benjamin and an investigation has since been launched. He said that if there are issues affecting prisoners, they can make reports to the Office in Charge (OC); complaints can also be made to senior prison officials whenever they visit the facility.
On the first day of her sentence, Benjamin said, she suffered a seizure. She recalled that there was no running water to the single washroom that serves dozens of women convicts. She was told she would have to fetch water bucket by bucket from a pipe in the yard. The washroom is located in a large open dorm on the top flat of a two-storey building. By the end of her stay, she said, water would occasionally come in the bathroom but they would still have to fetch to flush the toilet.
She said that from the beginning she indicated to prison officials that she could not fetch water as she suffered with seizures. She was ignored. Benjamin related that after fetching several buckets, she started to “blow”.
“The night I turn into bed and I knows nothing until a crowd was around me,” she recalled, adding that the shaking brought on by the seizure resulted in her falling from the top of a bunk bed where she had been sleeping. She was unable to walk for five days as a result. She said the prisoners are responsible for cleaning the dorm and there is a schedule. However much they clean though, the area retains a stench from the smelly mattresses. It was not long, Benjamin said, before she contracted an infection.
She could not say how many women were housed with her, but noted that it was like a barrack room, with dozens of women sleeping on bunk beds. She said from the time she arrived she began having problems with some of the inmates, who would speak untruths about her.
Benjamin spoke at length about the quality of the food and questioned why there was no self-support system at the prison.
She alleged that inmates are given tea mixed with flour and when she objected she was told that if she did not drink it she would be charged. Asked how she can substantiate this claim, she said that the flour would settle at the bottom of the cup. She said that after she continually resisted, she was told that she would have to see a doctor. She said that after being seen by a female doctor, she was given porridge instead of tea. However, this was no different as the cornmeal porridge given to her caused her to feel unwell and eventually she suffered with diarrhoea. Benjamin then used the money left at the Tuck Shop by her husband to purchase soda and water to drink in place of the porridge.
She told the Sunday Stabroek that the food was not fried, but “watered” – cooked in water until it was soggy. Meat and bread were luxury foods, she said, adding that sometimes meat appeared once a week, while bread was shared only on Sundays. If prisoners were not satisfied with the meals, the Tuck Shop was their only option.
Soap power and necessary items such as toilet paper have to be bought. Her best meal she said was on Republic Day. She described it as resembling fried rice with two “round” pieces of chicken.
She alleged that there are some prisoners who are treated like “queens”, a direct result of the good relationship they share with the prison staff.
Benjamin acknowledged that prisoners have access to various activities such as running, exercising, playing cards, knitting, sewing and farming, none of which she took part in.
‘Horrible’
Benjamin said her stay was nothing short of horrible and therefore, “I am out here to empower young people [to not] get themselves in trouble; it is not easy with the jail.” She said she was taken aback by the large youth population in the New Amsterdam Prison.
“God sent me there for a reason…, to let the President know what is going on up there,” she said, pleading with President David Granger to intervene and look into the situation.
Back in 2010, a prisoner had written a letter to this newspaper complaining about many of the same concerns raised by Benjamin. “We are served the lowest grade of brown rice which smells bad. The food is not tasty since it is seldom cooked with Aji or a cube, onions, seasoning, etc,” the prisoner wrote, adding that even vegetarian diet was poor. The prisoner said there was hardly any milk in the porridge, but the kitchen baked pastries twice a week and cooked the very best for officers’ functions and officers. According to the prisoner, inmates did not benefit from the pads, toilet paper, soap, soap powder, toothbrushes, toothpaste or anything that was donated.
Then Prison Director Dale Erskine, in response, had said that an immediate investigation was launched into the allegations and it was found that a number of them were blown out of proportion while others were substantiated.
Humane treatment
Founder of Red Thread, Karen de Souza said that while a visit to the facility has not been discussed, in wake of Benjamin’s claims it would be considered.
For de Souza the conditions described by the former inmates are “just ridiculous”. “I think once you incarcerate people…, the state has a responsibility to make sure that the prisoners are safe and secure. That they are treated humanely because having committed an offence and having been sentenced to jail does not mean that you have surrendered your humanity,” she told this newspaper.
“It is backward thinking and backward planning to wait for a crisis to take place before taking corrective measures.” She noted that there had been reports in the past about the situation at the women’s prison.
According to de Souza, the general view is that people who are locked up, “… can be treated in the worst possible way… Lockups are smelly [and] that tells you what is going on there.” She singled out the Brickdam lockups which is currently being expanded. She expressed certainty that the steel and concrete structure violates every possible human rights convention. “I cannot begin to imagine what the ventilation is like in there,” she said adding that government and by extension the Minister of Public Security cannot just sit back and allow this to continue. She pointed out that in the face of all the important issues facing the prison system, millions of dollars will now be spent on an inquiry. Her view is that in terms of speaking to the conditions prisoners endure and corrective action, another CoI was not required. She was speaking against the backdrop that there were several other inquiries to address – some of the very issues that this fresh inquiry will focus on.
“The question is having spent how many ever weeks on the Commission, having apportioned blame as it may be apportioned then what? Are we going to wait for the next fire or the next set of prisoners to come out on the roof? Or do we now want to see the women in New Amsterdam out on the roof?” she asked.
She had no qualms about noting Red Thread’s inaction. “I think we are guilty at Red Thread. We think we would accept some responsibility for not paying any mind to this particular aspect of social life in the country but I think we all, as a population, need to recognize that if we ignore the inhumanity with which prisoners are treated, then we are… much less human ourselves,” she charged.
According to de Souza there is no way that people of conscience should allow the conditions that are being heard of in the prisons to stand as they are.
Asked what her vision of a women’s prison was, de Souza said that whatever the physical structure, she expects some lights, sanitation, training areas and social areas. She said that if people are locked away and they are not provided with means of self-improvement to exercise the mind, to foster interaction, “then what comes out of the prison? …you spend many years dehumanizing people and when they come out then you basically take what you have trained. “If you pack double the number of people into a space than the space is designed for, then of course you are going to create problems. It was difficult enough to see how much exercise a prisoner could have inside Camp Street and from the sound of it since they have been occupying buildings on every piece of vacant space they had no space to exercise. There was nothing really.”
With regard to the quality of food, she said that if it is not food that the prison officers are prepared to eat, then it should not be given to prisoners.
“They have not surrendered their humanity. They continue to be human and they should be treated as human which means that the food should be healthy and it must be palatable,” she said. On the issue of self-support, she said that given the location of the New Amsterdam facility, it may be difficult for relatives of prisoners to go there often if they live in the city because of the cost of travel. She said this makes it even more important that whatever is fed to prisoners, should be decent.
