Dear Editor,
Between 18th and 20th April the various media houses carried extracts from a US State Department report which claimed that overcrowding at the various prisons in Guyana was a result of the presence of high numbers of persons on remand. To support its claim the State Department report informed us that as at October 2015 there were 1944 prisoners in five facilities with a combined designed capacity of 1640. Later I read that the Prime Minister led an “executive ministerial delegation to meet with representatives of the judiciary to find ways of easing the backlog of cases.” This move can be seen as indicating the Prime Minister’s acceptance of the US State Department’s conclusion that it is remand prisoners who are causing overcrowding at our prisons. I disagree with this conclusion. Just counting heads of the make-up of inmates at the prisons and drawing conclusions based on this is poor analysis.
The Kaieteur News of 22nd April reported that the officer in charge at the Camp Street prison, Kevin Pilgrim, told the Commission of Inquiry that at the time of the recent disturbance and fire the facility housed 1014 prisoners. He further disclosed that of this number 413 were convicted inmates and 601 persons on remand. It would seem reasonable to me that since the courts in Guyana favour imprisonment as punishment and a way of disposing of those found guilty, at least 200 of those on remand will likely be found guilty at trial and therefore incarcerated . Based on my assumptions and the breakdown of the prison population offered by the Officer in Charge, the overcrowding problem would still remain after the 601 persons presently on remand had their day in court. This would be so since we are also told that the Camp Street prison was designed to house 531 prisoners. So, while there is no doubt that the high level of remand prisoners is a contributing factor to overcrowding today, its reduction will not bring about an end to overcrowding at our prisons.
Editor it is my belief that the main contributing factor to overcrowding generally is the high level of recidivism at the prisons. The last figure I saw tagged recidivism at around 70%. If this high level of recidivism is not stopped overcrowding will continue to plague the prison system. This high level of recidivism is a testimony to the failure of whatever rehabilitative programmes we have for convicted persons. In Guyana rehabilitative programmes seem to focus on vocational skills training, but this is inadequate. Studies have shown that the rehabilitative programmes that are known to have the highest level of success are those with four components: (a) a community based component; (b) a basic education component, for example ensuring that participants can read, write and count to an acceptable level; (c) a vocational skills training component and (d) a life skills education component.
While the importance of components (b) and (c) are easy to appreciate there might be need to talk a bit about the other two competencies addressed at (a) and (d). With regard to (a) rehabilitative programmes experience a higher level of failure than community based programmes. The prison environment is rarely seen as conducive to promoting rehabilitation. I think this might be so because the prison is a total institution. Living in society demands independence and initiative. On the other hand prisons do not encourage or tolerate independence and initiative by inmates. Inmates are told when to sleep, when to rise, when to eat, where to go, when to go, etc; someone else makes all the decisions for the inmates. The advantage of the community based programmes is that some time before the prisoner’s release he lives in a half-way house in the community, or at home if he has a stable family to return to; attends his training programme or goes to work every day. This is a system which allows him to gradually come to terms with the demands that living in a free society places on us all before he is set free. With respect to (d), when we speak of life skills we are referring to competencies that are demanded for successful living in the 21st century; for example competency at writing job applications, how to behave at job interviews, the ability to bargain, understand the need for compromise, anger control, etc. The prison population is made up mostly of persons who lack these social skills.
Director of Prisons Carl Graham is reported as informing the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) that the root causes of the riot at the Camp Street prison were overcrowding, prison gangs and a shortage of officers. He further informed the CoI that at present “the prison has a ratio of 2 prison officers to 7 prisoners” (perhaps it would have been better for him to say there is 1 officer for every 3.5 prisoners). But what shortage of officers is the Director speaking about? Perhaps some member of the Commission should have asked the Director what he thinks the ratio of staff to prisoners should be. Here in the USA a census of state prisons done in 2005 estimated the ratio of inmates to correctional officers (prison warders) in state prisons nationwide as 4.9 prisoners to 1 officer. In 2011 the Congressional Research Service revealed that at federal prisons the inmate to officer ratio was 10.2 to 1.
Further I doubt whether overcrowding played as much of a role in influencing the fire and deaths at the Georgetown Prison as claimed by the Director. Studies have shown that disturbances tend to break out mostly at those facilities or those sections of a facility where inmates are least occupied in work during most of the day. Doing planned meaningful and demanding work every day means participants have little time for trouble-making at the prison. Having inmates meaningfully occupied in productive work also contributes to the rehabilitation efforts. Having a work station to go to each day helps inmates to develop a healthy routine which is essential for holding down jobs when released. Developing a healthy attitude towards work can teach inmates a sense of responsibility. For example, the money they might gain as wages can be used to help take care of some of the needs of the convict’s dependents, pay restitution and help offset the cost to society for holding him in prison.
Editor, as far as criminal justice issues are concerned there is a lot to be done. True, in this area the country suffers from a shortage of skills and other resources. All the things I have suggested above the government might not have the capacity to act on immediately. Erecting half-way houses and training staff to manage these will be challenging financially. I understand this. But there are things we can do based upon the skills we have in Guyana at this time. In my letter of 17th April 2016 I indicated some of these. Based upon the level of crime, the failure of the present rehabilitation efforts and the overcrowding in prisons, those in authority dare not stand still.
Yours faithfully,
Claudius Prince
