THE EDITOR, Madam:
THE CONSIDERABLE hullabaloo that is taking place in our prisons these days reminds me in a relative sense of incidents that took place a few decades ago in the so-called bad old colonial days in what used to be British Guiana, and the need to compare what we had with what we now have.
I worked in the Prisons' Department in the early 1950s, to which, as a young civil servant, I had been hastily transferred to replace the late Martin Carter who had been interdicted from duty for participating in a demonstration mounted by the Peoples Progressive Party(PPP), something not allowed then under civil service regulations. He was subsequently dismissed, and thereafter became a committed politician and 'protest poet'.
Sometime after, at the time of the suspension of the country's Constitution, the late Cheddie Jagan and other activists of his party that had formed the government were detained briefly in the Georgetown Prison where I worked (he was later detained for a longer period at an interior prison). While at the Georgetown Prison, his wife, Janet, visited him on several occasions, and it was discovered that the number of her visits exceeded that which was prescribed under prison rules, and someone had leaked this information to the Commissioner of Local Government to whom the Superintendent of Prisons reported.
The Superintendent, an Englishman, when asked whether this was true, called for the prisoner's record, and, after reviewing it, tipped his ink bottle, thereby spilling ink all over the document. He requested the warder to prepare a new record and to revise the number of visits to conform with the regulations. This ploy did not work, and the Superintendent along with the Assistant Superintendent (a Guianese), who had day-to-day responsibility for that prison's operations were interdicted from duty, and an investigation was mounted into the affair.
A Deputy Superintendent of Prisons was assigned from the Trinidad Prisons' Department to run the Guianese service while the matter was being looked into. At the end of the investigations, both were found guilty, and never returned to duty.
I recall as well a warder losing his job at Christmas for attempting to convey a Christmas cake and other goodies to a prisoner. Prison was a spotlessly clean institution, with wooden floors wearing thin with the constant scrubbing. Keeping the prison clean was a part of the duties of 'hard labour' prisoners. Convicted persons, on entering prison had their clothes and any personal belongings taken from them and stored, and were given prison garb. A sentence of hard labour meant work.
Food was prepared in the prison kitchen, and the menu and amounts per prisoner were both prescribed, so that even the prisoners from time to time complained when they felt that the regulations governing meals had been breached. Farming, workshops and work gangs were strong features of the rehabilitative aspect of prison life.
Cells were locked at sundown. Prisoners were disciplined for misconduct by the Superintendent or his assistant (so too were the warders), and, in my three years of service, there were no riotous acts on the part of prisoners. Most of all, however, the corps of warders represented a highly disciplined staff, and those in charge were always mindful of the need to guard against warders themselves developing a prisoner mentality, thereby making it difficult to distinguish between the warder and the prisoner.
I know that these were the standards laid down by the Colonial Office in a colonial period, and therefore equally applicable to Jamaica at that time. Were we not supposed to bring into Independence all of those good features of purposefulness, discipline, fairness, decency and other civilising influences of a colonial prison service? Cynically, I can say that we seemed to have come a long way from those "bad old Colonial days", and successive governments seem to have abandoned their responsibility for this segment of our population.
Thanks to the media, everyone knows the depths of degradation to which our prison service has sunk, and I don't need to repeat the gory details of the mayhem that passes for corrective action. It seems that we have forgotten that our prisoners are still our citizens.
I am, etc.,
DONALD I. DRAYTON
Colegate
St. Ann