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Prison deaths COI…Facility was not designed to house 1000 inmates
– Officer in Charge tells commissioners
As the Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the death of 17 inmates at the Camp Street Prison continues, Officer in Charge Superintendent Kevin Pilgrim took the stand yesterday and told the commissioners that the prison
Officer in Charge Superintendent Kevin Pilgrim giving his testimony before the COI.
is not designed to house 1,000 inmates.
Pilgrim told the COI that the capacity at the prison is 531 but presently houses almost 1000 inmates.
As a result of this, there are a number of issues at the prison which affects both prisoners and prison officers.
“Overcrowding would present a number of challenges. Overcrowding means that persons have to share a single bed and sleep in hammocks. It means that a division with three showers would provide for 100-plus persons,” Pilgrim said.
He also pointed out that in an arrangement where a cell is required to hold one or three persons, that amount has to be doubled in order to accommodate all the inmates.
To further highlight the problem of overcrowding at the prison, the Superintendent said that inmates have to sleep and consume their meals in the same place.
“You will have interpersonal conflict and you will have violence,” Pilgrim told the commissioners under oath.
Questioned by the Attorney for the Joint Services, Selwyn Pieters, about the problem overcrowding creates on the facility itself, the senior official said that there are a lot of challenges, given that most of the buildings within the prison are predominantly wood and those structures were there since 1927.
Inmates swinging in hammocks will have an impact on the old wooden structure.
Also, the problem at the prison will affect officers to some extent, and this is mainly because of the limited amount of staffers at the jail.
“We would have a situation where there is one officer managing a division with 120 inmates and sometimes 160. Now, the structures are not modern, so that officers would have to go to an open door to deal with those persons there,” Pilgrim stressed.
He explained that there is no area where prison officers can deal with inmates individually. “The challenge is also when it comes to searching the buildings.”
According to the prison official, because the structures are old, they provide areas for concealment of contraband.
At the time of fire, Pilgrim said that there were 413 convicted inmates and 601 who were on remand – this amounts to 1014 prisoners in a facility which only caters for 531 persons.
“Of that population, 41 persons are serving sentences for murder, while 193 of them were remanded for murder. And 225 persons were incarcerated for offences against other persons, 105 of those were convicted and 120 were remanded at the time,” Pilgrim noted.
Based on data, the prison official said that there is a young population at the prison. According to him, 136 persons are between the ages of 30 and 36. There is also a small geriatric population of between 20 and 25 persons.
Adding to the overcrowding at the prison are those persons who were granted bail, but remained there because they could not afford to pay the required amounts, some of which range from $10,000 to $250,000.
At the time of the fire on March 3, last, there were 148 persons who were wrongly accused of various offences on remand, and there were 103 who were remanded for murder.
The COI was told that when a structure which is currently under construction is completed, the prison’s capacity will be 931 since the building is being constructed to cater for 400 prisoners.
The COI was ordered by President David Granger following what has been described as the deadliest riot to ever take place within the local prisons.
The President appointed Justice James Patterson, Merle Mendonca and retired Director of Prisons, Dale Erskine, as Commissioners to oversee the work.
The panel is expected to investigate, examine and report on the causes, circumstances and conditions that led to the disturbances on the morning of March 3, 2016, that resulted in the death of 17 prisoners at the Camp Street facility; the nature of all injuries sustained by the Prisoners, and any other subsequent disturbances.
The Inquiry is being conducted in the Conference Room of the Ministry of the Presidency’s Department of Public Service.
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