The unwitting killers among the prison wardens

Mar 04, 2016 Editorial, Features / Columnists

Guyana recorded its worst prison disaster ever when sixteen prisoners died. People dying in jail is nothing new. Given the crowded situation and the diseases that stalk the corridors of Third World prisons one would not have been surprised had there been an epidemic. However, this disaster was manmade. In fact it was fashioned by the prisoners themselves.
It is perhaps a good thing that the wooden sections of the prison do not house very violent men so the threat of a major conflagration has never arisen. However, there are other sections that even prison wardens are afraid to venture alone. These are brick sections. One of these sections spawned Guyana’s worst prison disaster.
We may argue that a prison should be free of incendiary devices and implements of violence. Yet we know that such is wishful thinking because it is extremely easy to smuggle things into the prisons. It is here that other prison wardens, especially those who witnessed the death of those sixteen prisoners should realize how dangerous they act when they smuggle things to prisoners.
They have been known to smuggle cigarettes, phones, knives and even guns into the prisons. On February 23, 2002 five prisoners broke out of the very Camp Street jail. They had a gun and knives. They stabbed one guard to death and shot another. To this day, we have not heard a word of remorse from the prison wardens who might have precipitated the deaths and injuries to these guards.
Thursday’s riot came almost 14 years to the day a prison officer died and a woman warden shot in her head and reduced to a vegetable.
Guards may have been complicit in the Thursday riots that have claimed the sixteen lives. Time and again there have been arrests of wardens who attempted to smuggle contraband into the jail. Yet this has not served as a deterrent because others have kept on smuggling. These wardens are complicit in the fiery deaths of the sixteen.
But life is not lopsided; the prisoners themselves were the major players. All of them in that fateful cell were the most violent of the prisoners in the jail. A simple review of their crimes would show that they robbed and they killed en route to jail. So it was that they were all lumped together.
One night earlier these prisoners set fire to mattresses. That blaze did not threaten lives but it must have been a welcome distraction. So another bout of anger and another fire. Perhaps prison escape was on the cards; perhaps it was a case of merely seeking attention but whatever it was, it went horribly wrong. People died.
There are reports that the deaths might have been suicide. It has been reported that one of those who died was keen to keep his colleagues in the cell, perhaps to prevent the officers from removing them to post them to another prison location.
This was actually underway given the mini-riot of Wednesday night. Prisoners were being sent to Mazaruni, Timehri and in some cases, Berbice. The inmates did not want to be sent anywhere so we have a bigger riot, facilitated by material smuggled in by prison guards. The prisoners lit a fire larger than the one they lit Wednesday, not taking into consideration the heat of the day as opposed to the cool of Wednesday night.
They proceeded to lock themselves in the cell block unaware that they were now at the mercy of the flames. Realisation came late, too late. Men were dying and those alive were screaming their lungs out amidst the smoke that was slowly choking them and the flames that were licking at them.
The fallout from this is how inadequate the country’s largest referral hospital is. Five burnt prisoners descended on the hospital and other seriously injured Guyanese had to be turned away. This is inexplicable, given the millions of dollars spent on public health in Guyana.
Five burn patients could not grab the attention of all the doctors there, but they did.

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The unwitting killers among the prison wardens

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