BRING IN THE FOREIGN JUDGES NOW!

Feb 07, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

A mentally ill individual should never be incarcerated in a prison. Such a person needs to be in a mental asylum where he can be treated and if needs be isolated under medical supervision.
It was thoughtless to have placed the inmate who went berserk last Friday morning in a prison; it was even more disconcerting to know that he was placed in the company of another prisoner given his record of behaviour and the suspicions of his mental illness.
We have a serious problem and two prisoners are now dead because of this problem. The mentally ill prisoner who was mauled by fellow inmates after he himself had pulverized his cellmate ought not to have been at the Camp Street prison.
Once a mental health problem was detected, he should have been sent for evaluation and treatment at the mental asylum. He ought not to have been in the prison.
But there are other major problems which this incident has unearthed. The first of these is the reaction of the guards. It seems extraordinary that other prisoners were able to get to the pulverized prisoner and his assailant before the guards did.
How this happened is something to be explained, not just regretted? How can prisoners get to the assailant and beat him to death before the guards reached the area.
What is it we have for a prison system? Are our prison cells left open at night. Just as it was possible for the prisoners to get to the assailant to maul him to death, reportedly with the use of pieces of wood, why are we to not believe that the same prisoners cannot simply walk in and out of the prison as they wish?
It is known that prisoners are able to smuggle all manner of substances into the prison system. Drugs have been found in prison, and it is therefore not beyond the ingenuity of the prisoners to all produce weapons which they can hide.
But where did the prisoners who meted out summary justice to the assailant of Friday morning’s fracas get the pieces of wood with which to maul the assailant? What is it we have going on in the prisons? Hopefully, the Ministry of Home Affairs will launch an investigation and that its findings will be taken seriously.
We can look back at this tragedy and argue that things may have been different if only things had been different. Well, things were not different and instead of harboring over the “if only” problem, a serious attempt should be made to address some of the wider issues that give rise to these unfortunate deaths.
One of the dead prisoners was awaiting trial since 2006. This is far too long for someone to be on remand. No one should be awaiting trial for more than six months.
The problem is the backlog in our justice administration system, but it is not a problem which cannot be easily solved. Once there is the will there will be a way and hopefully this incident will force the authorities to act to ensure that no murder accused has to wait longer than six months for trial.
It needs no emphasizing how justice can be compromised when persons have to wait eons for their trial.
Witnesses can pass on or migrate during this long wait and memories can be dulled, thus leading to a situation whereby a credible case can no longer be made out years after a murder took place.
There is a solution, and hopefully one of the last acts of President Jagdeo before he demits office would be to finally fix this backlog problem. A good place to start is with those accused of murder. All that is needed to clear this backlog is for ten retired judges from England and the Caribbean to be brought here on a two-year stint to undertake these trials.
With ten more judges trying murder cases, all the murder cases during each assizes will be completed and the prisons will be less congested. So just ask the British government and the CARICOM Secretariat to recruit these judges. Forget about those misplaced notions of sovereignty of our judicial system. We should not have to bother about that since our final Court of Appeal is now the Caribbean Court of Justice. We do not also have to worry about the repercussions of the presence of these foreign judges on local civil law.
The judges should be brought to simply try murder cases which are based on universally accepted principles of common law.
Every year we bring all manner of experts to work in Guyana. The results are not always that flattering. Yet the one area in which foreign professionals are urgently needed and which their impact can be most rewarding is the one area in which they are noticeably absent. Let us hope it does not take another tragedy for us to set this right.

Latest News

BRING IN THE FOREIGN JUDGES NOW!

Related

Similar Articles

The Glenn Lall Show|| February, 14th, 2025

Follow on Tik Tok @Glennlall

THE BLUNT OF THE DAY

Sports

Fifties from Knight/Alleyne, bowlers help Barbados trounce Guyana

Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Haiti Dominate...

Guyana’s President Dr. Irfaan Ali to replace...

Jagdeo urges Associations to take a business...

The Battle for Barbados: One Guyana Racing Stable...

Tyrrell breaks 12-year-old school record to claim...

Features/Columnists

The PPP/C’s rotten return

Why the U.S. Should Strengthen Trade Ties with the Caribbean

Elections’ victory

Publisher’s Note

Weekend Cartoon

Bridge Watch

Demerara Harbour Bridge

> Berbice Bridge […]

BRING IN THE FOREIGN JUDGES NOW!

Share this:

Related

Similar Articles

The Glenn Lall Show|| February, 14th, 2025

Follow on Tik Tok @Glennlall

THE BLUNT OF THE DAY

Sports

Features/Columnists

Publisher’s Note

Weekend Cartoon

Bridge Watch

Demerara Harbour Bridge

> Berbice Bridge […]