Feeding remand prisoners costs Guyana $150M annually

Nov 24, 2017 News

– modern database on inmates seen as key to address problems

Minster of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan (right) and Crime Chief (ag) Paul Williams at the Grand Coastal workshop yesterday.

The large number of remand prisoners is costing the nation a fortune annually. As a result, alternatives to pre-trial methods must be utilised to resolve this problem.
“The current remand population of our prison facilities accounts for 35 percent of all inmates. The cost of providing meals alone for the remand population is estimated $150M annually. That’s just for food and there are several additional costs associated with incarceration of these pretrial detainees,” says Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan.
The official made the statements yesterday morning during the opening of a forum to discuss the recommendations of the Draft Final Report on a study of alternatives to incarceration for pre-trial detainees. The event was held at the Grand Coastal Inn, Conference Room, Le Ressouvenir, East Coast Demerara.
The study was commissioned through the Citizen Security Strengthening Programme of the Ministry of Public Security.
It came after two deadly fires, both deliberately set, at the Camp Street prisons. These left inmates dead and several dangerous escapees on the run.
The shifting around of prisoners displaced by the Camp Street fire earlier this year had brought to fore the problems of remand prisoners.
It was widely felt that the courts were too harsh in their considerations of letting prisoners on bail.
According to Ramjattan, bearing the high costs in mind, members of the judiciary should be more encouraged and willing to capitalise on the opportunities to utilise alternatives to pre-trial detention.
“The current high rate of remand to prison population makes a strong case for stakeholders along the criminal justice chain to seek ways to eliminate inappropriate use of pretrial detention,” the minister contended.
Meanwhile, the consultant, Peter J. Pursglove, S.C, said that there is a disappointing failure of the justice system to gather and produce statistics that can be used to reliably develop alternative systems.
“We found that we had prisoners with different names, but the same facts, different dates of births from the judiciary and the prison service, different sentences and different times that they were committed. Overall, we found that their statistics could not be accurately used because they were unreliable,” Pursglove said.

Prisoners being taken away from the burning Camp Street facilities in July.

In addition, the consultant said that the development of an effective alternative to pre-trial detention is heavily dependent on the establishment and use of a modern data collection system.
“There has to be a proper prisoner database if there is going to be any development of sentencing reforms. You have got to know who is in your prison and why he’s there. It is important for remand prisoners that you should be able to look at each remand prisoner and know exactly when he entered prison and when his next court appearance should be. You have got to constantly monitor those in the system to make sure they are going through their stages at the right time otherwise they do get left behind,” the consultant said.

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