US State Department report highlights neglect of Guyana prisons

Apr 28, 2016 News

A section the 2015 US State Department’s report focuses heavily on the prisons and culture of punishment in Guyana. It highlights the mistreatment of inmates by prison officials as well as allegations of police abuse of

Inside Camp Street Prison

suspects and detainees.
Recently, Guyana’s prison has become a source for concern, with one of the deadliest riots occurring on March 3 last. The incident claimed the lives of 18 inmates.
Following the incident a Commission of Inquiry was launched into the prisons. Director of Prisons, Carl Graham, has since listed overcrowding, prison gangs and a shortage of staff as being among the root causes of riots within the prisons.
However, according to the 2015 edition of the US State Department report on Guyana the prison service has other issues.
The report stated that while the prisons offered rehabilitation programmes focused on vocational training and education, such programmes did not adequately address the needs of prisoners with substance abuse problems.
The US State Department reported that as of October, there were 1,944 prisoners in five facilities with a combined design capacity of 1,640 under the watch of the Guyana Prison Service.
“A total of 963 prisoners were in Georgetown’s Camp Street Prison, designed to hold 550 inmates. Overcrowding was in large part due to a backlog of pretrial detainees, who constituted approximately 11.3 percent of the total prison population.”
The Department outlined that the prison and jail conditions, particularly in police holding cells, were harsh and potentially life threatening due to gross overcrowding, physical abuse, and inadequate sanitary conditions and medical care.
“Officials held offenders 16 years of age and older with the adult prison population. In most cases officials held juvenile offenders aged 15 years and younger in the New Opportunity Corps (NOC), a juvenile correctional center that offers primary education, vocational training, and basic medical care.”
The State also reported in April that a 15-year-old girl was ordered by the court to be placed in the New Opportunity Corps, (NOC) but instead she was held for weeks in a detention centre at a police station where she was subsequently sexually assaulted by a male constable.
With regards to administration, the document outlines that based on their investigation the Department found no information about the adequacy of prison recordkeeping or the extent to which authorities used alternatives to sentencing for nonviolent offenders.
“Prisoners often, had circumvented procedures for submitting complaints by passing letters addressed to government officials through family members.”
The report also highlighted that there was no indication that the government declined to permit outside groups to monitor prison conditions independently, but there were no requests to make such visits during the year.
“The Prison visiting committees prepared monthly reports on the Georgetown, Mazaruni, New Amsterdam, and Timehri prisons…”
Additionally, the report which was released earlier this month revealed that a lack of independent and transparent procedures for handling allegations of abuses by security force members, arbitrary killings by the government or its agents; allegations of government corruption, lengthy pretrial detention and laws that discriminate against women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex persons are among the nation’s human rights practices.