A prison in the centre of Georgetown

-issues and events that plagued the Camp Street Prison for decades

By Ravena Gildharie
THE recent riot, jail break and fire that ravished the Camp Street Prison has created great unease, but as events continue to unravel, there are more questions than answers, not only with regard to last Sunday’s dreadful occurrences, but decade-old issues that plagued the correctional facility.

Overcrowding, poor conditions for prisoners and staff, minimal scope for rehabilitation, corruption among some prison service officers and collusion with inmates, and the hefty financial burden on taxpayers were long identified and recognised by various leaders, political and governing administrators and other stakeholders with power to implement the necessary change. A 2001 report on prison reform by a British team outlined these problems along with inadequate alternatives to incarceration that ultimately contributed to the overcrowding. There have been many other such inquiries and reviews over the years, with similar findings and recommendations. But have any of these been applied?

Former Prisons Director Dale Erskine, recently acknowledged that everyone had been aware of the vulnerability and the toxicity of the Georgetown Prison. He said though that administrators “planned tirelessly institutionally, as well as at the Joint Services’ level to prevent this from occurring over the past decades.” Erskine made the comment via his personal Facebook page.
“As prison administrators and prison officers, we always fear the outcome of a total conflagration at the Georgetown Prison considering the old wooden buildings and the overpopulation at the prison, knowing how devastating it will be to officers, inmates and ultimately the State,” he indicated.

He said officers went to work daily with a feeling that it could be their last, “considering the overpopulation, poor security design of most prison buildings, a high number of dangerous, violent, in- disciplined and angry prisoners, inadequate and poorly trained staff as well as a number of corrupt/unprofessional staff.”
These factors combined, Erskine said, were highly explosive and officers tried their best to keep it from exploding on a daily basis.

Looking ahead, the former prisons administrator urged: “Important now, is not to expend too much energies on finding faults as to how this inevitable situation occurred, considering the ever-present vulnerabilities within the prison system, but finding solutions to this crisis.”
Erskine emphasised that “judicious, hard and endurable decisions have to be made swiftly to ensure that the new prison infrastructure is designed in such a manner,as to diminish the will of prisoners to break out.”

Lessons from previous incidents
In 2016, Erskine was part of the Justice James Patterson-led Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the March 3, 2016 deadly inferno which claimed the lives of 17 inmates at Camp Street. The fire was reportedly set by the prisoners in protest against what they felt was excessive length of time on remand while awaiting trial.
Upon receipt of the CoI Report in June 2016, President David Granger pledged his administration’s commitment to tackle the weaknesses and challenges in the country’s century-old prison system.

He was quoted as saying, “We have to understand that we inherited a prison system and the three main prisons were built during the reign of Queen Victoria…the prison population…has outgrown the infrastructure…So, we are aware that something must be done and before we take action, we had to find out what the conditions were at the Georgetown Prison, because it is at the heart of the city and there are schools, there are people, there are business places, and we want to ensure that there’s never a threat to human safety ever again.”

The findings of the report were never made public, perhaps for security reasons.
Now, as authorities scamper to recapture the escapees from this latest breakout, and temporarily accommodate the hundreds still in custody and displaced by the fire, discussion hovers over the prison’s re-establishment at the Camp Street location. The penal facility dates back to the colonial era and became enclosed by a busy residential hub as Georgetown transitioned.

At the site last week, President Granger said his government does not intend to rebuild the Georgetown Prison as it was previously configured. He assured of measures to strengthen the prison system to guard against such disturbances that have rocked the nation at Camp Street over the years. Though there would be a facility at the location, he said the government plans to relocate the correctional facility outside of the city’s centre.
Back in 2004, then, Colonel Granger was part of a Disciplined Forces Commission that conducted a public inquiry of the prison service. Led by then Appeal Court Judge Ian Chang, the commission made 28 recommendations for improvements to the prisons, increased staff and improved capacity of Mazaruni to deal with dangerous prisoners and others.

A previous 2002 Cecil Kennard-led CoI into the February 23, 2002 jailbreak concluded that it would not have occurred if the prisoners had been transferred to Mazaruni. In the ‘2002 Mash Day Jailbreak,’ five prisoners shot and stabbed their way out of the Georgetown Prison, setting in train a sequence of dangerous events. The prisoners were Andrew Douglas, Dale Moore, Shawn Browne, Mark Fraser and Troy Dick.

Overcrowding and contributing factors
In his testimony to the Chang inquiry, Erskine, who was then Prisons Director, told the commission that relocation of the Georgetown Prison was necessary. He even hinted to a possible site at Soesdyke to accommodate a new facility, and implored construction to be done in phases for the project to be more financially manageable.
He dubbed the 2002 Jailbreak as a turning point that prompted the need for a holistic approach, involving not just equipment, but intelligence-gathering and an understanding of the environment. He had also stressed the need for more collaboration between the judiciary and the prison services to make the criminal justice system more efficient.
There have been added calls over the years for the judiciary to consider alternative sentencing for minor offences.

To address the overcrowding, prison and judicial authorities during this week assessed charges of many prisoners, and some 91 inmates imprisoned for non-violent crimes who were unable to post their bail previously, were sent on their own recognisance. According to reports, 50 prisoners who were charged for the possession of small amounts of marijuana qualified for bail and another 57 who were scheduled to be officially released within the month, were expected to be sent on early release by Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan.

A United States Department of State Human Rights Report 2002, indicated that though then prison officials acknowledged that the Camp Street Prison was intended to hold 500 inmates, there were 815 prisoners at the time of the review. This was a decrease from between 900 to 1100 during 2000, the report stated.

At last week’s incident, there were 1018 inmates at Camp Street with a large percentage charged with capital offences, including death-row convict Mark Royden Williams, who was sentenced for the Bartica Massacre and other murders. He reportedly orchestrated the recent fury.
A section the 2015 U.S. State Department’s report also focused heavily on the prisons and culture of punishment in Guyana. It highlighted the mistreatment of inmates by some prison officials and stated too that while the prisons offered rehabilitation programmes focused on vocational training and education, such programmes did not adequately address the needs of prisoners with substance-abuse problems.

“Overcrowding was in large part due to a backlog of pretrial detainees, who constituted approximately 11.3 percent of the total prison population,” the report stated.

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