Benn slams poor condition of police lock-ups

Jul 30, 2025 News

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…found women lying on floor at BV station

Kaieteur News – Minister of Home Affairs, Robeson Benn, on Tuesday raised serious concerns about the conditions under which individuals are held while in police custody, emphasising the need for more humane treatment of those detained.

The minister also stressed that all police stations across Guyana should be a “welcoming” place for both victims and perpetrators.

Speaking at the National Road Safety Stakeholders Forum, Tuesday, Minister Benn said both victims and alleged offenders who may be traumatised, deserve to be treated with dignity and compassion. “The police station must be a welcoming place to people. It must be a place where those who are traumatised, which could be both the victim and the perpetrator too, that it should somehow be a welcoming and calming place at the police station. Even the lock-ups must have beds and pillows for people to sleep on and lie on,” he declared.

The minister recounted a distressing experience of witnessing women lying on the bare concrete floor in a police station, describing the scene as inhumane and disrespectful to the individuals involved and to the integrity of the justice system itself. “I was traumatised when I went to the BV (Beterverwagting, East Coast Demerara) police station one time and there were four young ladies lying on the cold concrete floor 3’0 clock in the morning. We can’t have that. It’s disrespectful to them, to us, to the wider society, and it creates a disrespectful criminal justice system,” Minister Benn stated.

He called for a cultural shift in how the criminal justice system treats people in custody, stating, “We don’t have to treat ourselves like we used to be treated by other people many years ago. We’ve inherited these behaviours and attitudes to each other. I don’t think it’s imprinted in our DNA, but we’ve inherited, and we’ve got to let those things and to bring the way we treat and deal with each other at a better level,” he said.

Meanwhile, while recognising the efforts of the state in addressing overcrowding in prisons, the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee last year rapped Guyana on what it termed ‘harsh and life-threatening conditions’ in the country’s prisons.

According to the committee, those conditions include severe overcrowding, physical abuse, lack of access to adequate medical care, potable water, sanitary conditions, and limited sunlight. The human rights committee noted that it is also concerned by reports of the lack of transparency, accountability, and independence of the prison visiting committees, which are mandated to regularly inspect prisons and investigate prisoners’ complaints.

The committee recommended that the state should ensure that the conditions of detention are in compliance with relevant international human rights standards. “In particular, the state party should: harmonise laws and policies on the detention of prisoners with the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners,” the committee recommended.

In its report, the UN committee also suggested that the state “takes immediate measures to significantly reduce overcrowding in prisons, including through the wider application of non-custodial measures as an alternative to imprisonment, as outlined in the United Nations’ standard minimum rules for non-custodial measures; improve the conditions of detention, and ensure adequate access to healthcare, clean water, and natural light for persons held in all places of deprivation of liberty; facilitate independent, effective, and regular monitoring of all places of detention without prior notice and on an unsupervised basis, including by establishing an independent mechanism to monitor the prison conditions and providing mandatory training for relevant law enforcement officers as well as judges, prosecutors, and other legal professionals regarding prevention of deaths in custody.”
In its 2020 country report on human rights, the US State Department said persons detained by law enforcement officials, particularly in the Guyana Police Force’s (GPF) holding cells, face life-threatening conditions.

Looking into the country’s prison and detention centre conditions, the report found that the conditions in the police holding cells were reportedly “harsh and potentially life threatening” because of overcrowding, physical abuse and inadequate sanitary conditions.

According to the US State Department, in October, the Guyana Prison Service’s (GPS) statistics showed that in seven facilities, there were 1,761 inmates with a combined design capacity of 1,505. This was due to the overcrowding of a backlog of pretrial detainees, who account for 30 per cent of the total prison population.

Back in 2018, the report had stated that the government had released findings of a 2017 independent study, which was funded by the Inter-American Development Bank, which found prisoners being physically abused by prison officers. It stated too, that in 2018, the government released findings of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, that found the conditions at the Lusignan prison appalling and that the cells were unhealthy for human habitation. There have been reports of the lack of potable water and complaints of lengthy confinement in the cells, with limited opportunities for sunlight by inmates. The state also reported that in the adult prison, individuals, 16 years and older, are among the population, while in most cases, young offenders, below the age of 16, were held in a juvenile correctional centre, where they are offered primary education, vocational training and medical care. The report pointed out that the prison service authorities did state that the condition of the prisons and detention centres are monthly investigated and monitored and that prisoners often circumvent procedures for submitting complaints of inhuman conditions or mistreatment by sending letters to government officials through their relatives.

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• BV station, National Road Safety, Police lock-ups, poor condition, Robeson Benn

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