PROBLEMS WITHIN OUR PRISONS

Sep 20, 2008 Editorial

Our prison system is bursting at the seams. As we reported yesterday, prison authorities are desperately trying to cope with the high influx of remand prisoners.

There are some 596 remand prisoners whose cases are now before the courts while a further seventy-four are awaiting trial in the High Courts.

It would be injudicious to ask our Courts to consider the holding capacity of our prison population before further remanding prisoners.

The functions of the Courts in denying bail must be based strictly on what the law states and on whether the person charged is likely to skip bail if granted.

However what will clearly ease the situation is if cases are more quickly discharged. This will require not just more judges and magistrates to reduce the trial period, but also more and better resourced crime investigators and court prosecutors.

Without improved trial turnover times, our prisons face a bleak outlook. There is at our main remand facility, the Camp Street prisons, a serious case of overcrowding.

Yesterday we reported that the prison population presently stands at 1,084 as against a capacity of 630. In short, the prison has about twice as many persons today than it was built for.

To add to the difficulties posed by this burgeoning prison population is the acute shortage of manpower. This makes the task of managing the prisons more problematic, something not also made easier by the sloth within the judicial system.

We therefore do have a serious problem of overcrowding on our hands. And we should thank our lucky stars that the situation has not become chaotic given the staff shortages and the large numbers of remand prisoners who are being held at Camp Street.

This is something for which a solution needs to be found now. Clearly the degree of overcrowding is unacceptable.

Each day more and more remand prisoners are being added to the prison population, something that is not likely to improve since more and more laws are being passed which deny bail for a number of serious offences.

Guyana has also become a more criminalized society than before. When the prisons were first built, the population of the country was about 25% greater than it is today.

There were, however, less numbers of crimes committed and therefore the Camp Street prisons, built to house just over six hundred persons, was deemed to be large enough.

It clearly is not large enough today and therefore what is needed is for other remand facilities to be built so as to ease the burden on Camp Street.

This of course will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, something that is likely to be spurned by legislators and the public alike, who will question why such large sums should be diverted from development simply to house prisoners.

The ultimate solution would be of course to reduce the incidence of crime and thus the number of persons likely to be placed on remand.

This is however not likely to happen in the short term, if at all. Thus, there seems little other option other than to increase the number of holding facilities.

In the interim, the authorities should seriously consider legal amendments that would reduce the number of cases in which bail is statutorily denied so that instead of someone being automatically denied bail for example in narcotic cases, the law could provide for substantive bail which would serve as an inducement for those charged to keep their court dates.

What should also be considered is a review of sentencing fines and penalties that would allow minor offenders to do community service rather than having to face incarceration.

This would contribute in the interim to at least some small decrease in the prison population until such time as larger facilities are built.

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