Last year, when considering the establishment of the Commission of Inquiry into the March 2016 prison disturbances in which 17 inmates lost their lives, I made two recommendations having to do with imprisonment and sentencing, which I am following up on here, because I believe they are still important to how our criminal justice system develops and is responded to by those in jail. Being in a jail or prison may be technically two different things, but in Guyanese parlance there is no difference and the former is thought of as being worse.
My first recommendation was rooted in my belief that prisoners are allowed only the most rudimentary decent human contact and thus imprisonment destroys the entire process by which,