The launching today of a US$8m IDB-funded project to ease prison overcrowding has been postponed.
Under the Ministry of Legal Affairs, the project would have been inaugurated in the aftermath of yesterday’s razing of the main Camp Street jail in an uprising.
The Camp Street prison was thought to have over 1,000 prisoners yesterday, far in excess of the roughly 600 persons it was built for.
The government is likely to face questions as to why in the wake of last year’s insurrection at the same Camp Street jail, when 17 prisoners died, more urgent steps weren’t taken to reduce the prison population at the main penitentiary.
