Retribution is a bitch

Mar 06, 2016 Features / Columnists, My Column

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About 20 years ago, someone from overseas had told the government that the Camp Street jail was badly sited; that it should be removed and the site, which represents prime real estate, be converted to something profitable.
Even the developed countries had the knowledge to put prisons far away from the civilian population. In cases where they were so constructed, they were built in such a way that the violent criminals were placed far underground.
When the Camp Street jail was built more than one hundred years ago, the authorities never envisaged that the place would be so full. However, they selected a site at Mazaruni, far from the civilian population and as remote as remote could be. There is talk that as far back as a century ago, the plan was to construct another large prison on an island in the Essequibo.
Mazaruni was for the hardened criminals, while Georgetown would have accommodated in-transit prisoners, those on remand, and those who had relatively short sentences. As a boy, I recalled my parents talking about the authorities “losting” somebody at Mazaruni. That was the dreaded prison.
I visited there on many occasions, both as an Information Officer and a member of the Prisons visiting committee. That place had a lot going for it. It had a large farm, livestock farms, poultry pens and of course, cricket and football fields. The prisoners were not cooped up. They had room for exercise and they were gainfully employed on the farms.
Indeed there have been the odd riot and the escapes, but nothing like what happened four days ago in the city. On the same plot of land in the Mazaruni is another prison, Sibley Hall, for young offenders. Sibley Hall was also home for some political detainees way back in the 1960s.
I suppose that like most people, prisoners feel comfortable in the city. They can access just about anything and they know that their loved ones are not far away. They can shout messages to passersby on the streets and be assured that the message would reach the intended person.
However, the overcrowding could not have been something good. It is not tolerated in nature. Science shows that in overcrowded rat colonies, the rats devour the young; they cull the population down to manageable proportions.
I have also read that sea lions attack and kill the newborn (not their own) because they too abhor overcrowding. And so it is with other animals. Nature never intended that there be overcrowding in any society.
It has been found that murder rates are higher in those societies that are overcrowded. It is as if something in the brain is released that allows people to do weird things under such conditions. It is no different in homes. The best homes are those with fewer people.
Some argue that there is more of everything to go around—more love, more conversation and even more space.
Overcrowded classrooms are not the best places for learning and this has been explained ad infinitum. So why should one expect anything other than what happened late last week in the Camp Street jail? Some may argue that the criminal has only himself to blame, that he does not need to do things to enter an overcrowded facility.
There are reports that after the brouhaha on Wednesday night, the prison authorities moved to reduce the overcrowding by shipping some people to the Mazaruni Prisons, but the very prisoners objected. I know one prisoner who was shipped from Camp Street to New Amsterdam. When he landed there he was overwhelmed to the point that he said that he does not want to go back to Georgetown.
However, we still had the overcrowded situation in Camp Street, where anything could be had—marijuana, cocaine, cigarettes and cell phones. The authorities raided on Wednesday and found some things. This reportedly angered those who suffered the loss, so there was the first fire.
Of course, in the past there had been fires, but none was enough to threaten the prison population. So I suppose those who set the fire didn’t expect things to get to the point they did. Unless the people who set the fire were not those in the cell block that lost 17 men and may yet lose another soon.
One officer said to me on Friday that after the search on Wednesday they thought that they had got anything worth finding. Yet the next day in the same location they found even more. How could this be? It turns out that prison officers help foster the criminality in the prisons.
And now I am forced to wax sentimental. Yes; the people who died were accused of committing heinous crimes. Most of them were there for murder. One of them happened to have a quantity of arms and ammunition. But they all died horribly.
Some say retribution is a bitch; that it happens during one’s lifetime. If indeed those people were murderers then somehow, the dead reached from the grave to visit those men with death. But then again, in this society we believe that the law should take its course. Some of those men might have walked, given the nature of justice. That was not to be.
Yet the prison situation needs to be revamped. In the same way the government built the Marriott they may consider building a bigger and more modern prison, because the number of criminals keeps increasing. Until then, one may consider asking the prison officers to be honest, and so save the lives of their colleagues and even some criminals.

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