Retribution vs. Rehabilitation

OUR prison system is a monumental failure. There are many arguments that can be made for and against it, but when the tallies are done, it would say that our prison system is a monumental failure. In our pursuit to obtain justice for the wronged and punish perceived wrongdoings, we have created a system in which even the most innocuous of crimes can see you languishing in an overcrowded prison for years.

With 17 deaths in a prison riot last year and one death in last week’s occurrence which started with a fire and led to the escape of prisoners, the glaring issue of our prison system is one that has been coming up a lot. Mostly, people talk about the need for the city’s prison to be relocated and the need for more prisons to deal with overcrowding. Less than often, the conversation about the need for prison reform and the need for rehabilitative measures arises. Yet, it is exactly here that we need the conversation to go.

President David Granger in a televised address to the nation made mention to the fact that the public knows that they “are building a brand new prison in Mazaruni and effecting repairs to the others.” This is definitely a good step. There should be adequate prison facilities for those who have broken the law because I believe overcrowding to be amongst the chief reasons of human rights violations in prisons. However, while overcrowding can decrease temporarily by the building of new prisons, it is not a sustainable solution. If the same judicial system exists then those new prisons too will soon become too full. Then, what we have are new prisons that further entrap the poor but also new prisons which put pressure on the country’s valuable resources.

Presidents Granger had initiated yearly pardons for low threat offenders and this is a good initiative. The releasing of non-violent offenders following the fire was also a good move. However, when we begin to examine the crimes of these people being pardoned and released, we realise that, given their crimes, their sentences usually outweigh the seriousness. Others have not even been found guilty as yet, but because of being unable to afford bail, they languish in prison. When we look at who largely make up the prison population, we will see it disproportionally affects those who live lives of poverty. We cannot keep upholding a justice system that punishes the poor with imprisonment for being poor. What we need is not just slight modifications to a stationary system. We need to create one that is always evolving; one that sees the need for alternatives to imprisonment and which aims to educate and reform those imprisoned.

We already have some elements of this with inmates being taught CSEC and basic technical education. If we are serious about taking down our crime levels, then we need to begin exploring options that could be restorative and solidifying the ones that are helping. Parole system programmes should be implemented so as to help prisoners reintegrate into society. We need to explore non-custodial sentences for non-violent and petty offenders. The money spent to upkeep prisoners are remarkably higher than money spent on non-custodial sanctions. According to the findings of the Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the Camp Street Prison riot last year, it takes $485,000 to house one prisoner annually.  Do we still think imprisoning petty and non-violent offenders should be our first step? Then, there are indirect costs such as economic and healthcare that cannot accurately be measured but which are often immense and long term.

Of course, rehabilitation does require a considerable amount of tax money and there are bound to be programmes that fail. That is the realistic outcome, but we should keep in mind that nothing is 100 percent effective. Rehabilitation and educational programmes are crucial in our fight against mass incarceration. So, even while the financial resources needed might be pricey, we must keep in mind other larger and longer lasting causes of up keeping a broken system.

Unless prisoners learn valuable practical and life skills while imprisoned which can help them obtain and keep a job on release, the chances are that they will end up right back in the prison system. Ensuring that our people are not imprisoned for minor and non-violent offenses and instead are guided through rehabilitation is not an individual interest. It has large implications on the financial and social effects on our country. We must collectively recognise that the system as it remains now is basically a tutorial on becoming a hardened criminal and if we are serious about deterring future crimes, we will seek to reform the prison system and all the structures that contribute to it, such as the Judiciary.

 

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