NO NEED FOR EXTENSION OF MAZARUNI

Jul 15, 2017 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The government says that it needs six billion dollars to construct a proper jail. The government is wrong; it need not be spending six billion dollars on any new corrections facility.
The government does not need to expand the Mazaruni penitentiary which is where the bulk of the six billion dollars is likely to be spent. The expansion of Mazaruni will not solve the problem of overcrowding in the prison system.
The principal cause of overcrowding is because of the high number of remand prisoners – persons who have been denied bail or unable to post bail. This is the source of the overcrowding.
You cannot move remand prisoners to Mazaruni. It is too far away from where the bulk of the trials take place – the Georgetown Magisterial District. It will be a high security risk and it will be costly to be transporting remand prisoners long distances. There is no reason why Camp Street should be abandoned as a remand facility.
A decision as to what needs to be constructed and where has to be based on an analysis of the sentences of inmates. No one has done that analysis in order to determine just how many have been sentenced to longer than three years which would allow them to be housed at Mazaruni and those who have been sentenced to less than three years where they can be housed elsewhere.
No Commission of Inquiry, not having done that sort of detailed analysis, should be recommending any structure be built anywhere. The analysis has to be done first.
The government should invite a statistician to do an analysis of the sentences of inmates and from this a decision can be made as to the maximum number of inmates which should be housed at the various prisons, both for short-term prisoners and long-term prisoners.
If the government decriminalizes the possession of small amounts of marijuana, it can significantly reduce the prison population. Hundreds of young men and women are languishing in prison because of the mandatory custodial sentencing of drug offenders caught with certain about of illegal narcotics. If the National Assembly debates immediately the proposed private members’ bill to remove mandatory custodial sentences for drug offenders; the prison population will decrease.
The second thing that will reduce the prison population is to have alternative sentencing. Too many prisoners are behind bars because their families cannot afford bail or do not care to bail them. But if they were given a few of months supervised hard labour to clean drains, instead of being sent to prison, the numbers behind bars would reduce and the six billion dollars would shrink.
There is no need for six billion dollars since there are other places which can be converted into penitentiaries. The Guyana Defence Force has a number of military bases that can be converted into prisons for persons serving terms greater than one year but less than three years. Turn some of these military bases, which are a drain on the treasury, into prison camps.
What Guyana needs is a number of smaller, manageable prisons. Collectively these will cost less than six billion dollars and they can help pay for themselves. Court fines are significant. Should a percentage of all court fines not go directly to finance prisons? If careful monitoring is done of the payment of court fines, then the monies can be found to build smaller prisons.
Increasing some fines can help offset the high cost of maintaining prisoners. Large prisons tend to be unmanageable. The private sector’s suggestion of the privatization of prisons is one way to go in terms of cost recovery.
The government does not need to think about a maximum security prison. It needs to build smaller, more manageable prisons; it should review the necessity of mandatory custodial sentences for certain offences, it should utilize unproductive assets such as military bases to be used as prisons and it should privatize some prisons such as youth and female offenders’ prisons.
Six billion dollars need not be spent. But if it has to be spent it need not come from taxes. It can be raised through ensuring proper management of court fines.

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NO NEED FOR EXTENSION OF MAZARUNI

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