What a cost when, in a most gruesome manner, seventeen individuals lost their lives as a result of having been taken into custody by a society that promised to safeguard all their other freedoms apart from their right to liberty.
Then the government, in its now accustomed fashion, hurried to establish a commission of inquiry, only to be told by more than one of the people who are familiar with this matter that its effort has been a waste of time and that what is required is the implementation of the recommendations found in the many previous studies, inquiries, etc.
Of course, while of some substance, it appears to me that this broad denial of the need for an inquiry can only be partially true as it speaks to past events but the inquiry is also expected to ‘investigate, examine and report on the causes, circumstances and conditions that led to the fatal disturbances and any other subsequent disturbances. It will also inquire into the nature of all injuries sustained by the prisoners.’ I suspect there must be some value in considering how the specific event morphed into the deadly inferno.
We tend to speak of prisons as if they always existed as we know them today. The truth is that the use of imprisonment as a means of punishment only grew rapidly in the 17th/18th century, about the same time as the industrial revolution. Before that, prisons were essentially holding pens for those awaiting sentencing and punishment came by way of capital punishment, flogging, stocking, transportation to the colonies, etc. Indeed, the birth of the modern prison in England was partly due to the rise of the prison population as a result of magistrates refusing to hand down death sentences for minor offences – imprisonment was an improvement on the previous penalty.
Yet, imprisonment takes away the liberty of human beings and generally catapults them into an unstable environment of violence, drug abuse, the mentally suspect, unemployment, etc. Figures for England and Wales show that in 2015 there were 85,641 prisoners; 147 prisoners per 100,000 people (Guyana has about 259 prisoners per 100,000 people, but is by no means the worst case in the Caribbean) and there were some 14,247 prisoner-on-prisoner assaults, 595 serious assaults on staff and 89 self-inflicted deaths, with a typical week seeing 600 incidents of self-harm, at least one suicide and 350 assaults including 90 on staff. Prime Minister David Cameron claimed that British prisons have failed to perform the tasks expected of them, saying that current levels of prison violence, drug-taking and self-harm ‘should shame us all’. (Prisons ‘overhaul’ announced by David Cameron. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk)
‘We need prisons. Some people – including, of course, rapists, murderers, child abusers, gang leaders – belong in them,” he claimed …. [but] I also strongly believe that we must offer chances to change; for those trying hard to turn themselves around, we should offer hope; that in a compassionate country, we should help those who’ve made mistakes to find their way back onto the right path.’
We are told by our government that the objectives of the Guyana Prison Service is ‘to provide for the custody and retraining of persons committed to the prisons, and to engage in the economic and other social programmes supportive of national objectives’ (Estimates of the Public Sector Vol. 2 2014). Although I am certain that as part of its objectives, the service is also committed to rehabilitation, its focus is upon incapacitation, and much of the discourse that is taking place about what is wrong with the system appears to begin and end with attempts to make prison conditions marginally better, dealing with trial delays, overcrowding, inadequate food, need for family visits, providing better jail keepers and such like.
Initially, imprisonment was a more humane response to the crime situation. But it is a huge mistake to believe that when we take away a person’s physical liberty that is all we are doing, and perhaps this COI can begin to think somewhat more deeply about what the conditions in prison actually do to people and what are the viable alternatives to imprisonment. For me, imprisonment in itself is a dehumanizing condition that should be pressed into service as rarely as possible. Indeed, it appears to me that a tension exists between the wish to punish and at the same time rehabilitate.
Since a prisoner is allowed only the most minimal decent human contact and relationships with family and friends are stretched to breaking point, imprisonment destroys the entire process where through their individual and collective activity man meets man in the process of humanization and development.
In my conceptualization, man is a living part of nature who must have the opportunity to utilise all of nature including himself to maintain and develop himself and his community. Conscious life activity distinguishes man’s activities from that of animal. Through his activities and associations man acquires needs, relationships, desires, ideals, etc. Man is the most universal and free being because he is able to utilise all of nature. Evidence of this is the fact that unlike other animals, man does not only produce because of immediate physical needs: man produces even when he is free from physical needs and indeed only truly produces when not pressed by such needs. The necessary link between man and nature is best viewed in his relationship to other men for it is in this relationship that man, his community and nature are humanized.
Prison destroys this entire process: apart from the absence of normal human contact, the opportunity to labour and contribute to the development of the community and oneself that is so essential to the humanizing process, are largely suspended in the prison setting.
Thus, while forms of imprisonment may be inevitable in some circumstances, as stated above, it must not be thought for one moment that when we imprison people all we are doing is removing is their right to liberty because upon that right rests the entire edifice of individual and social human development and growth.
henryjeffrey@yahoo.com
