The three new buildings currently being constructed at the Lusignan Prison to hold close to one thousand inmates are about 20% complete, according to Director of Prisons (ag) Nicklon Elliott.
“Of course the three facilities at Lusignan are currently under construction and it is about 20 percent complete. This would see the facility holding about close to a thousand prisoners,” Elliott told reporters on the sidelines of an event held on Friday.
He added that plans are in the pipeline to relocate the women’s holding facility to Lusignan.
“In next year’s budget, we are looking to remove or relocate the female prison to Lusignan,” Elliott said.
The female prisoners’ facility is situated in New Amsterdam, Berbice.
Over recent years, the Lusignan Prison has seen a large number of escapes, riots and protests. In some of these incidents, lives have been lost.
In July last year, there was a major fire at the facility which left eleven inmates injured and hundreds dislocated after prisoners set fire to the dorm following a drug seizure.
Months after, the Ministry of Home Affairs had invited bids for $1.071b in works on the Lusignan Prison.
In an amended invitation for bids which was published in Stabroek News in April this year, the Ministry had said that three structures are to be reconstructed.
Each of these it is estimated will cost $357m.
On January 28 this year, while arguing against an opposition motion on the Lusignan Prison, Minister of Home Affairs Robeson Benn had pointed at the poor conditions that the government had found at the penitentiary upon taking office in August last year.
He told the National Assembly that he had “pointed out that the prisoners were living in worse conditions than the pigs and chickens we have out there”.
Benn said then that two new dormitories were being constructed and the government was working towards establishing five new prison modules.
By the end of this year, he said, three of those prison modules which will house 600 persons are expected to be in place. “So what we will do in one year, you were unable to do in five years,” Benn told the House.
According to Elliott, overcrowding in the prisons remains a concern to the authorities.
At present, he said the country’s prison population is about 20 to 30 percent over capacity.
“Because of the dynamics at the various locations, we are trying to ensure that persons are accommodated because we can’t refuse any entry coming from the courts,” Elliott said.
