Editorial | New prison not a luxury | Comment

If we understand Prime Minister Andrew Holness correctly, building a modern maximum security prison is not one of his government's top priorities.

Mr Holness has two concerns.

One of them is cost. Prisons are expensive, so building one would divert resources from projects that some people think are more urgent.

Second, there could be political backlash.

Or, as Mr Holness put the argument last week: “The problem, of course, is budgetary constraints. There are many demands on the budget.

“Building a new prison would certainly draw attention to whether this is a wise use of funds when we need new hospitals, good schools, roads and all the other things.”

A better question, however, would be whether Jamaica can afford not to build a new, modern prison, and what the state of the island's correctional facilities says about Jamaica as a society.

In addition, the question arises as to whether a new prison needs to be financed by the state.

On the latter point, either Mr Holness or his National Security Minister, Horace Chang, could explain the current status of a proposal more than two years old by a private group to build, own, operate and ultimately transfer (BOOT) a state-of-the-art facility at an annual cost to the government of no more than it currently spends on maintaining correctional facilities.

Apart from Dr Chang’s initial confirmation of the unsolicited offer, the government has not had any public discussion about the idea, as The Gleaner.

However, the renewed focus on the problems of Jamaica's prisons provides Minister Chang with an opportunity to start this dialogue.

REPEATED ATTENTION

The renewed focus on prisons was sparked by the killing of eight people and the injury of nine others in a drive-by shooting in the township of Clarendon last week. The head of the police crime unit, Deputy Commissioner Fitz Bailey, claimed the shooting was partly planned by crime bosses behind bars.

This is not the first time that such allegations have been made about the ability of prisoners to continue to carry out criminal activities from supposedly maximum security prisons.

Indeed, in response to Mr Bailey's comment, the new head of the Prison Service, retired Brigadier General Radgh Mason, acknowledged that the facilities were porous and that there were guards among the smugglers and traffickers.

Such problems can be improved with diligence, but given the state of the island's correctional facilities, especially the maximum security prisons, it is unlikely that any change will occur.

The prisons are largely run-down, Dickensian workhouses that tend to turn new and sometimes minor offenders into hardened criminals rather than reform them. In fact, many experts warn that prison conditions contribute significantly to Jamaica's high recidivism rate of over 40 percent.

There are ten correctional facilities in Jamaica. They house more than 3,700 inmates. The two main ones, Tower Street in Kingston and St. Catherine Adult Correctional Facility in Spanish Town, house 70 percent of the inmates. Both are overcrowded by 30 to 40 percent.

Shredding plants

The latter was built 370 years ago and was originally a slave barracks. The former is 179 years old. Both have been partially renovated and modernized over the years. But there's just nothing that can be done with crumbling facilities, especially while they continue to house inmates.

Indeed, over the past three decades, both national justice reform analysts and local and international human rights activists – including rapporteurs from the United Nations and the Organization of American States – have repeatedly impressed upon individual governments the urgency of reform.

In its 2023 report on human rights in Jamaica, the U.S. State Department described conditions in the island's prisons and detention centers as “harsh and life-threatening due to gross overcrowding, physical abuse, restricted nutrition, poor sanitation, inadequate medical care, and poor administration.”

Some of those conditions worsened after an earthquake last October weakened structures on Tower Street and St. Catherine, prompting government engineers to warn that damaged parts of some cell blocks posed an “imminent danger to inmates and staff.”

In 2015, the British government under David Cameron offered to provide most of the money to build a modern prison in Jamaica. The condition was that Jamaicans serving the last part of their sentence at home. Britain would pay for their upkeep in Jamaica.

Mr Holness, then in opposition, scoffed at the idea, describing it as an example of Britain offering prisons instead of schools. When he came to office months later, Mr Holness's government effectively buried the plan.

In 2020, when the issue was again on the agenda, Dr. Chang explained the government's intention to finance a prison from its own resources.

However, the government could not find the financial space to do so. The proposed BOOT program seemed to be a possible solution – until Holness's comment last week.

One of the standards of decency and humanity in a society is how it treats its members who violate its customs and laws. Even when punishing, the better ones show compassion and try to rehabilitate them. Jamaica's prisons, by contrast, fare poorly.