Indigenous peoples, women, children among most vulnerable in the prison

Jun 18, 2016 News

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Indigenous people, women and children are among the most vulnerable in the prison population. According to the Commission of Inquiry report into the March 3 disturbances at the Camp Street Prison. Indigenous people constitute the population group whose rights are most violated by the prison system.

In addition to the generalized inhumane conditions of prison to which all detainees are exposed, the report said that indigenous people suffer a range of additional hardships.
“In the first instance, the indigenous people are separated completely from their families and communities. Prison diet never includes food to which they are accustomed.  Indigenous people by nature are less assertive or aggressive than other population groups. They endure far longer delays in trials due to the unreliability of interior courts.  In many cases a poor command of English isolates indigenous prisoners almost completely from life around them.”
With regard to women in prison, the document outlined that a great majority of female offenders do not constitute a threat to society, the primary justification for incarceration.
According to the information, women in prison in Guyana constitute four per cent of the total number of incarcerated persons.
However, the security arrangements at the Women’s Prison in New Amsterdam, Berbice, are extensions of what is in place for the men’s section within the same compound: an unnecessarily depressing multiplicity of locks, bars, barbed wire and electronic devices in overcrowded spaces.
These women are usually incarcerated because they are the victims of men either by being used  as ‘drug mules’, or for stealing so as to feed children for whom child-fathers are not providing, or they are on murder charges for having turned violently on a brutal male partner.
“Prison is a much harsher experience for women than men. On the outside, women are usually the ones responsible for looking after the family and children.  An extended stay in prison usually means women emerge to find their children dispersed, their partner no longer around and their home taken over by others.  A revolution in attitudes to women’s imprisonment is needed.”
“Most of the women in prison have themselves either been physically and/or sexually abused since childhood and in need of help not punishment.”
The report recommended that rather than imprisonment, women in trouble with the law need the safety of half-way houses in which they can get their life together, develop the self-confidence and the skills to care for themselves and their children and eventually re-start life.
The document went on to state that the Guyana Prison Service, (GPS) is the major casualty of the inexcusably primitive approach to mental health in Guyana. Based on their investigation, the Commission said that the mentally ill persons, in significant numbers, who find themselves in trouble with the law are passed through the prisons and magistracy into Guyana’s prisons, which has no resources, human or financial, for integrating them into an over-crowded prison.
“Although the Ministry of Health should provide statutorily a full-time medical doctor, the delivery of routine medical services is a constant problem. Services for the mentally ill are even less reliable.  This situation works systematic hardship on all aspects of prison life.
“Even less concern is devoted to the stressful effect on other prisoners of living with mentally-ill inmates in over-crowded spaces. An intervention led by the Ministry of Health involving the magistracy, the police and the GPS is needed urgently.”
Substance abusers and those living with HIV are also listed amongst the vulnerable. These two categories of people require constant specialized treatment which is often not available, owing to the lack of human and other resources in the prisons
Aging prisoners, too, are considered vulnerable. Recommendations were made for consideration to be given to early release of aging prisoners in the interests of lowering overcrowding.
However, in accordance to the information uncovered by the Commission, detained children are perhaps the most vulnerable
With respect to detention of children, the report said that the arrangements at the New Opportunity Corps and the Holding Centre in Sophia are far from satisfactory.
“Neither of these institutions is structured in the best interests of children. Each is insulated from effective civic oversight.  ‘wandering’ charges against young girls should be scrapped and replaced by legal remedies which, for example, can focus more on making older males aware that encouraging young girls into leaving home (the basis of most ‘wandering’) attract charges of ‘grooming’ under the Sexual Offences Act (which carries a custodial penalty).
“Laying ‘grooming’ charges against serial offenders should have a sobering effect on others.”

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