THE STATE of unrest reported from what used to be known as the General Penitentiary at Tower Street in downtown Kingston is not what should happen in a penal institution; certainly not if it is run efficiently by a no-nonsense administration.
If, as now appears to be the case, some of the problems derive not from recalcitrant inmates but from some of the warders involved in trafficking contraband into the prison, then strong corrective measures must be imposed without delay. For this would mean that correctional officers who are supposed to be supervisors of disciplinary measures have corruptly betrayed their obligations in a vital security area.
Four members of the staff have been suspended pending investigations into trafficking of contraband. As Commissioner Richard Reese, head of the Correctional Services Department, has said, in one case a staffer was held with ganja, a cell phone and a bottle of rum. It appears that the inmates are the customers of the contraband flow.
Some two years ago, the Government spent millions of dollars installing equipment to jam cellular phone calls between prisoners and their cronies and/or dependents on the outside. In fact the jammers provoked complaints from residents in the immediate vicinity of the prison that their phone calls were affected by the electronic jamming.
Even so, within a few months the furtive communication was back in business. So much so that within the last week 33 cell phones were seized after a specially selected group of warders staged a raid on the cells.
A week ago, inmates staged a hunger strike against conditions in the prison; but even that event is believed to have been sparked by a group of the correctional officers.
Weeding out the bad eggs from the supervisory staff must happen before any efforts at rehabilitation can have lasting effect. The penal process should aim at returning at least some of the inmates to useful productive lives outside. Corrupt warders cannot help this process.
The poor state of the prisons generally has attracted some international attention. Last month the United States State Department human rights report for 2003 was scathing in its criticism of abuse of detainees and prisoners by police and prison guards. The report said that despite the attempts by Government to address the situation, "the continued impunity for police who commit abuses remained a problem". The report also cited poor sanitary conditions and the long-standing problem of over-crowding.
We expect that the action taken against some warders at Tower Street is just the start of more corrective action in all the prisons.
