T HE BRITISH government is considering a proposal to deport some foreign drug smugglers to serve jail sentences in their home countries, in a bid to ease pressure on Britain's prison system. About half of the smugglers are Jamaican women.
Home Office Minister Beverley Hughes, said on Tuesday the number of foreign women in British jails had increased by 37 per cent over the last 12 months, compared to a 14 per cent rise in British women prisoners in the same period.
On Tuesday British Customs authorities at Heathrow airport arrested 25 people coming from Jamaica on suspicion that they had tried to bring illegal drugs into the country. The 25 had reportedly swallowed several pellets of cocaine. Around half of the extra foreign female prisoners are reported to be from Jamaica many of them so-called 'mules' used by drug gangs to attempt to smuggle narcotics into Britain, she told a committee of lawmakers.
Hughes said the growth of the prison population was hampering rehabilitation schemes designed to prevent re-offending.
Britain's prisons currently house 68,300 inmates, close to the operational capacity of 70,559, beyond which the system could not be safely run, the committee heard.
In a reaction last night, Miss Hilary Phillips, Q.C., president of the Jamaican Bar Association said the proposal was likely to have a serious effect on the local prison system which was built to accommodate a specific number of prisons. She said an unexpected influx of prisoners would likely have a negative effect on the prison system.
Miss Phillips also said she was not sure that there was any legal framework for prisoners serving sentences in the UK being entitled to serve their sentences in the local prison system or that Jamaica could send British prisoners to serve their sentences there.
Miss Phillips pointed out that there were likely to be anomalies in relation to the severity of the sentences that prisoners were given in the United Kingdom as opposed to the sentences that prisoners were given in Jamaica. She said if such an arrangement were allowed to take place, there would have to be some reciprocal arrangement so that the local prison system would not become completely overburdened.
"I firmly believe that prisoners should serve their sentences where they have committed the offences," Miss Phillips added.
Commenting on the proposal by the British Government, attorney-at-law Wentworth Charles said it would have a devastating impact on Jamaica's penal institutions.
"The correctional institutions are heavily overcrowded," said Mr. Charles.
He pointed out Jamaica has only one female correctional facility and most of the drug smugglers nabbed in the United Kingdom were women.
