No gallows for Camp Street Prison – Ramjattan
Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan
Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan

MINISTER of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan says that he has no intention of rebuilding the former Camp Street Prison gallows — unused for over 20 years—at the new Georgetown prison holding facility.

The revelation comes as a group of experts, organised by the European Union (EU) and the British High Commission (BHC) visited Guyana last week, to examine the use of capital punishment and its possible abolition locally.

At a public lecture at the National Library last Wednesday, Attorney-at-law Nigel Hughes, who spoke on the history of the death penalty in Guyana, had questioned whether the gallows would be rebuilt.

The question came on the premise that Guyana is the only country in South America to retain the death penalty, while 142 countries or approximately 75 per cent of the world’s nations have abolished the death penalty.

Meanwhile, although there are currently 17 people on death row locally and individuals continue to be sentenced to death, no one has been executed in Guyana in over 20 years.
On July 9, 2017 prisoners started a fire at the Camp Street Prison. The result was the almost complete obliteration of the structure; the death of one prison warden and the escape of several prisoners.

Director of Prisons Gladwin Samuels had stated that the construction of new holding facilities at the Camp Street prison, is scheduled to begin before the end of the year.
Speaking with the Guyana Chronicle, Minister Ramjattan provided his personal view on capital punishment and stated, too, that the blue prints of the new holding facility reserves no room for a prison gallows.

“My view is that it should be abolished, totally. I am against the death penalty and that is why I have been an advocate that we must not hang anybody in Guyana and the moratorium has been since a long, long time ago, and we have not hanged anybody for about 20 years now,” Ramajattan said.

Addressing the question of whether this means that the government would be moving in the direction of abolition and how soon this could happen, he stated: “We would like to convert that —and that’s personally I’m speaking—because there are members of my Cabinet who think otherwise, so it is not something that we have unanimity on but I personally would like to see [it be abolished] because hanging persons does not deter criminality.”

His view was shared by the Co-Executive Director of The Death Penalty Project (UK), Saul Lehrfreund and Deputy Director of Equal Justice Initiative (USA), Randy Susskind.
During their time in Guyana, they presented research which show that no evidence proves that the death penalty reduces crime or deters criminals; that capital punishment is closely related to the era of chattel slavery and that public opinion should not lead the debate on human rights commitments.

Offences which carry the death penalty in Guyana include: murder, treason, various military offences and terrorism-related offences resulting in death.

When questioned directly on whether the new holding facilities would see the rebuilding of the gallows, Ramjattan said: “I would not have any space for that.”

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