In wake of the devastating fire that destroyed the Georgetown Prison Minister of Finance Winston Jordan is to approach the National Assembly to approve supplementary funds to deal with emergency expenditure. Jordan told the Department of Public Information that his ministry is currently awaiting the financial figures from the Public Security Ministry, “They’re to put a plan that involves the emergency expenditure and other short-term expenditures. The other long term or medium-term expenditure will be provided for in the 2018 budget, so we’ll just deal with the emergency expenditure for now, which we’ll return to parliament for shortly.”

The Ministries of Public Infrastructure and Public Security have been utilising their existing resources to meet emergency expenditure required to fund rehabilitation works at the Georgetown Prisons. Both ministries will be refunded even as they seek additional funds for other areas they will have to meet, Minister Jordan explained.
Following the July 09 fire, which gutted the wooden sections of the Georgetown Prisons, just over 1,000 prisoners were transferred to the Lusignan, Timehri, New Amsterdam and Mazaruni Prisons. This necessitated additional spending by the Ministries of Public Infrastructure and Public Security as additional infrastructural works had to be undertaken to facilitate the temporary holding facility at Lusignan and rehabilitation works on the Camp Street concrete prison.

Meanwhile, a programme steering committee will oversee the implementation of measures that will tackle the problem of prison overcrowding in the country, Legal Affairs Minister and Attorney General, Basil Williams has said. He gave the comments during an update with the Guyana Chronicle Wednesday on the recently cancelled “Support for the Criminal Justice System” launch. The project which is expected to work to significantly reduce prison population through ‘pre-trial liberty’ and ‘alternative sentencing’ was cancelled one day after the country’s main prison facility at Camp Street was destroyed by fire.
Williams told the newspaper that despite the cancellation, the ministry, its Inter-American Development Bank partners who were already in the country at the time of the unrest and other stakeholders were able to go ahead with their work. “We were able to meet,” Williams posited, before noting that the project will be, “managed by a sectoral committee.”

The Attorney General’s office had noted in a public missive that the establishment of the sectoral team is to provide oversight and strategic functions as a ‘Project Steering Committee’. The Ministry of Legal Affairs, Supreme Court of Judicature, Chambers of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Social Protection; and the Ministry of Finance were all key stakeholders of the project. It was noted that important issues coming out of the engagement involved the establishment of a Legal Aid pilot project which will provide legal assistance to persons accused of minor, non-violent offences in pre-trial detention. Enhancing the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and police prosecutors’ capacities to handle their cases before they proceed to trial; building capacity enhancement at the Magistracy Level to expedite cases and address alternative sentencing were also discussed.

The Legal Affairs Ministry said since the 2016 prison unrest and fire at the Camp Street jail, “The Government of Guyana, through the Ministry of Legal Affairs, has been assiduously moving apace to address the issue of overcrowding at the prisons.” The ministry said that the government has therefore secured US$8m from the IDB to fund the support for the criminal justice system project. Guyana’s prison population is said to be at 256 per 100,000, which is above the world average of 146 per 100,000. The current IDB-funded project is designed to complement a previously approved citizen security programme targeting high-crime neighbourhoods.
Four million of the US eight million dollars allocated to the project is financed via the IDB’s ordinary capital, has a 30-year amortisation period and an interest rate based on Libor. The remaining $4 million is through the IDB’s subsidised lending arm. It has a 40-year amortisation period and a fixed interest rate of 0.25 per cent. Last Monday’s prison fire completely destroyed wooden structures at the Camp Street prison. One prison warden was killed by escaping prisoners, while several others were injured. While no prisoner was harmed during last Monday’s unrest, 17 died in 2016 when inmates had lit their mattresses. They said they were fed up of overcrowded prison cells, poor food and long trial dates.