We never know how good freedom is

Oct 12, 2008 Features / Columnists, My Column

---

I have never been in jail although on a few occasions cell doors slammed behind me, locking me in a cell and again on some occasions when I entered the Camp Street jail and had the horrible experience of hearing the outer door close, then having to wait for a second door to open, then close and bolted behind me.

On every occasion I would ask myself what it would be like if those doors were to remain closed thus denying me access to the outside for a considerable period, perhaps a few months.

Then a fear would come over me but it would not last long. I would simply convince myself that my detention, self-imposed I must admit, is just temporary.

The first time a cell door slammed shut behind me was when I had to race to Beterverwagting because an uncle of mine had simply lost his mind.

In Guyanese parlance—he run mad and the police had to take him away. The man wanted to sing and I sat in the BV lockups with him and thumped the floor keeping time with whatever he sang.

I became afraid when it was time for me to leave and the man kept insisting that I had to stay there with him and the police ranks at the station wanted to comply.

There and then I recalled the saying, “Jail ain’t mek fuh cats and dogs.” It surely ain’t mek fuh me because I couldn’t take the confinement for long periods.

The times at the Camp Street jail were to visit some prisoners who had requested my presence and once to meet with the Prison Director.

Mazaruni Prisons were something else. Of course, the main door is locked behind you and when you enter the main dormitory the door is also locked, so you are all alone with the prisoners.

Many people see these prisoners as animals but when you get close to them they are human beings who in a moment of madness did something stupid, sometimes very stupid.

One man killed his woman because she was unfaithful; another allowed some object to fill his eyes so he went into a house on the East Coast of Demerara and got caught. He did not get caught in the house but he did not know the area so he did not know where to run.

There were the sex offenders who continued along their merry way and actually formed relationships behind the prison walls. I still remember the group who had partners that they dominated.

I was working with the Ministry of Information when I took a film show to Mazaruni. There were a few men who, having taken their seat, would call to another, “Get you ass over here” and the person would meekly walk over and sit beside the dominant male.

In that dorm way back then, there were many such relationships and I concluded that the men did not long for anything while inside.

I have since learnt that the situation is little different in the female prisons. There was this woman who was caught on tape talking about a relationship she formed with a female prison officer while inside.

Love blooms in the most unlikely places and between the most unlikely of candidates at times, largely because the sex urge is so great and because there are more gays and lesbians in the society than we would want to believe.

These memories came flooding back because of the Oliver Hinckson incident. Oliver is a friend and when he was arrested I was surprised. I knew that he was not in the best of health and I wondered how he would fare inside those walls which are now bursting at the seams.

I am not supposed to comment on his case but I cannot help but wonder why it was that he took so long to secure bail. People have been arrested with guns and ammunition and they came out in a shorter time than Hinckson did.

In other countries, if an offence is bailable then the authorities readily grant bail because they all recognize a person’s inalienable right to his freedom.

Oliver Hinckson lost months of his freedom because some people simply wanted him jailed even before they convicted him and that cannot be right. Something is wrong with the system.

There was once a co-worker of mine who was arrested for the murder of a Muslim cleric in Regent Street. At the time I was working as Editor of New Nation.

This young man spent just over a year in jail while the system set about trying to prove him guilty although there was nothing to prove.

The day he got released he simply walked the streets of Georgetown taking in the sights. This young man is no longer in Guyana but I remember him telling me how he could not get enough of the freedom he was enjoying this time around.

There was the Customs officer whom Paul Fung-a-Fat jailed when he had no reason to. Chancellor Desiree Bernard, who heard the appeal, could only tell the young man to get on with his life and that she was sorry that she could not give him back what he had lost.

President Bharrat Jagdeo once said to me that he has no control over the judiciary, that the judges and magistrates are independent.

However, there is nothing to tell me that the judges and magistrates who heard the numerous applications hadn’t one eye on the politicians and the other on the justice system. Often the accused suffers.

Yes. There are people who, once granted bail, would simply go back on the streets and commit the same crime or similar crimes only to go back in court and secure even more bail. But that is the nature of the game, if one could call it that.

A traffic policeman stops an errant driver and locks him up. That is nonsense. Is it not time that we put things right?

We should not allow our judicial judgement to be clouded by personal feelings or by the perception that the politicians would want us to behave in a certain way.

Anyhow, I intend to keep far from jails because I might spend a very long time and time is something I do not have on my side.

---

---