Women should be jailed only in exceptional cases – Prison CoI report

THE Chairman and Commissioners of the Georgetown Prison Riot Commission of Inquiry (CoI) have recommended that women should be sent to jail only in exceptional cases, and prompt and thorough investigation should be carried out in response to all complaints of sexual harassment made against any officer of any state agency.Taking into consideration that prison is for those who pose a major threat to society, and that a majority of women prisoners are themselves victims of exploitation and physical and/or sexual abuse, there needs to be a revolutionary turnaround in the attitude of sentencing women to imprisonment, the report into the CoI states.

A suggestion has been made to establish a “half-way house” for women in trouble. It should serve as a substitute for imprisonment, and should feature restoration programmes to empower women to turn a new page.

“A different system of very small, self-sufficient units, with active programmes of training (and) considerable involvement from outside agencies, is urgently needed…in which they can get their (lives) together, develop the self-confidence and the skills to care for themselves and their children, and eventually re-start life” is what has been recommended.

Expressing concern at the high level of sexual abuse and exploitation to which women in detention are vulnerable, commissioners said the “long-delayed trials, venal lawyers and poorly-trained magistrates prolong and aggravate a basically unsound method of dealing with women involved in crime, creating overcrowding.”

“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. Most of the women in prison have themselves been either physically and/or sexually abused since childhood, and (they are) in need of help, not punishment,” the report states.

The report identifies a woman’s role as a care-giver as a factor which should attract higher priority in determining whether at all to imprison a woman. It also said that “long- delayed trials, venal lawyers and poorly-trained magistrates prolong and aggravate a basically unsound method of dealing with women involved in crime, creating over-crowding” in jail.

“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.”

According to the report, jailing of a parent or guardian may result in considerable hardship on innocent children, with them being forced to relocate, change schools, and suffer hardship; and this impact on children should be taken into account in sentencing decisions in Guyana.

“The great majority of female offenders do not constitute a threat to society, the primary justification for incarceration. However, the way society deals with women is simply an extension of what is considered appropriate for men. When a policy turns out to be inappropriate for men, it is usually disastrous for women, which is clearly the case with the current penal policy”, the report states.

While women constitute four per cent of Guyana’s prison population, security arrangements at the Women’s Prison in New Amsterdam, Berbice are extensions for what is in place for the men’s section within the same compound, and the report’s authors call it “an unnecessarily depressing multiplicity of locks, bars, barbed wire and electronic devices in overcrowded spaces.”

“The concept of detention as a last resort as a principle of penal policy takes on central importance…in the sentencing of women who are mothers, especially if they are the sole providers of children,” the CoI report noted.

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