When seventeen prisoners lost their lives in a fire at the Camp Street prison in March 2016, it occurred to me that society had failed in its duty of care to the prison population and I was not surprised when a few weeks ago, prisoners at the Lusignan prison were protesting their conditions in this era of the COVID-19. Then, in the present volatile political environment a WhatsApp message, purportedly coming from the account of Dr. Mellissa Ifill, arrived in my box (07/10/2020) and I thought that this is as good a time as any to again bring attention to the conditions of the prison population.
Dr. Ifill claimed that her friend Ms. Roxanne Prince-Myers (Deputy Chief Election Officer) was taken into police custody and expected to sleep on the ‘cold concrete floor’ of her cell. The police officers were professional but they like, many of the persons entering Ms. Prince-Myers’ presence, ‘did not properly wear their COVID masks,’ and Dr. Ifill said she was ‘petrified for my friend who … has challenges that put her at risk for complications from COVID-19’. Ms. Prince- Myers was arrested for ‘obstruction to justice’ and invoked her right to silence when asked about SOPS (statements of poll) relating to the 2020 elections. Dr. Ifill concluded, ‘This is not democracy – this is an inhuman, vindictive and evil abuse of power. I am beyond angry.’
There is much that concerns me about the treatment of some members of the Guyana Elections Commission in the context where these people are expected to be major witnesses in election petition cases that should be prioritised and concluded in a timely manner. That said, Dr. Ifill’s conclusion might be otherwise correct but the physical situation Ms. Prince-Myers faced is a chronic condition of state negligence. The 2016 US State Department Human Rights Guyana report stated that, ‘Prison and jail conditions, particularly in police holding cells, were harsh and potentially life threatening due to gross overcrowding, physical abuse, and inadequate sanitary conditions and medical care.’
Society needs prisons and there was a time when the belief was that criminals forfeited all their liberties and rights in prison. Today, however, it is understood that incarceration permits minimal decent human contact, stretches to breaking point the relationships with family and friends and destroys the entire process of proper social identification. Yet the fact that imprisonment is dehumanizing and should be used only when absolutely necessary is not widely appreciated, and generally when the Guyanese population thinks of prisons and prisoners they think about how to stop prisoners from escaping and quickly catching them if they do! But prisoners and those in custody now have substantial rights.
The 1955 United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (reformed in 2015 and renamed the Nelson Mandela Rules) provide comprehensive best practices standards that cover everything from the registration, personal hygiene, clothing, bedding, food, exercise, sport, medical services and discipline of those in custody to relation to the outside world, books, religion, retention of prisoners’ property, notification of death, illness, etc. that member countries are expected to observe.
Of relevance, Rule 21 states, ‘Every prisoner shall, in accordance with local or national standards, be provided with a separate bed and with separate and sufficient bedding which shall be clean when issued, kept in good order and changed often enough to ensure its cleanliness. … Rule 24, The provision of health care for prisoners is a State responsibility. … Prisoners should enjoy the same standards of health care that are available in the community, and should have access to necessary health-care services free of charge without discrimination on the grounds of their legal status. … Rule 27, all prisons shall ensure prompt access to medical attention in urgent cases. … Clinical decisions may only be taken by the responsible health-care professionals and may not be overruled or ignored by non-medical prison staff.’
Furthermore, apart from the above best practice guidelines, by way of the 1976 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Guyana is required to keep all prisoners safe, in good health and living in decent conditions. Article 7 states that, ‘No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’. And under Article 10 ‘All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person. … Accused persons shall, save in exceptional circumstances, be segregated from convicted persons and shall be subject to separate treatment appropriate to their status as unconvicted persons …. The penitentiary system shall comprise treatment of prisoners the essential aim of which shall be their reformation and social rehabilitation.’
The law of Guyana prohibits the torture, cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment of anyone and the Guyana Prison Service claims that its job 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). However, as indicated above, the reality is quite different and much of the public apathy is related to the low level of public education on this issue. But there is also a question of empathy.
There is the theory that in heterogeneous societies such as Guyana class, race and other perceptions reduce public empathy with prisoners. ‘The more unlike oneself the imagined perpetrator of crime, the harsher the conditions one will agree to impose upon convicted criminals, and the greater the range of acts one will agree should be designated as crimes. … More homogeneous nations institutionalize mercy, which is to say they attend more closely to the circumstances surrounding individual criminal acts. … The harshness of the punishment that fearful voters are convinced is the only thing that works on people who don’t think or act like them becomes a measure of the moral distance between these voters and people identified as criminals’ (https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/why-scandinavian-prisons-are-superior/279949/).
Perhaps because of their experience under the apartheid regime, the Bill of Rights in the South African Constitution deals with the rights of arrested, detained and accused persons quite comprehensively. For instance, it begins by stating that ‘Everyone who is arrested for allegedly committing an offence has the right to remain silent …. to be informed promptly ¬of the right to remain silent and of the consequences of not remaining silent.’ Later it states that ‘Everyone who is detained, including every sentenced prisoner, has the right to conditions of detention that are consistent with human dignity, including at least exercise and the provision, at state expense, of adequate accommodation, nutrition, reading material and medical treatment.’
The South African example suggests an aspect of the way forward, but regime behaviour will not change until much more is done to make the public aware of the negative aspects of imprisonment, take steps to increase public sympathy and empathy and force governments to pay substantial compensation for neglecting their duty of care to all those who are detained or imprisoned.
henryjeffrey@yahoo.com
