While police remain vague about possible charges against any prison officer found guilty of collusion in the deadly break from Her Majesty’s Prison on January 17, the Penal Code lays out the punishment for such conduct in no uncertain terms.
Section 250 of the Penal Code states that “whoever aids the escape of any prisoner from any prison or from the custody of any person in charge of such prisoner shall be liable to imprisonment for six months.”
So according to the law of The Bahamas, it is possible that officers found to have colluded with the prisoners in this escape plan could get six months for each prisoner they helped to escape.
In fact, those officers might serve a jail term of two years ﾖ six months for each of the four prisoners who successfully escaped.
The prisonﾒs internal report on the investigation of a special five-man Court of Inquiry into the January 17 jailbreak, led by Assistant Superintendent of Prisons Aldric Williams, concludes that an unidentified number of allegedly corrupt prison officers facilitated the escape either through negligence or complicity.
As reported earlier, the Journal has obtained a copy of the report, which was completed on February 25. It recommends police investigation of officers whose names surfaced as suspects in the jailbreak.
Chief Superintendent of Police Hulan Hanna told the Journal that the police investigation of those officers continues, and that prison officers found to have been involved in the deadly escape could face criminal charges depending on their involvement.
Supt. Hanna was unable to say exactly how many officers are under investigation, noting that the police are “following wherever the leads take them.”
Section 249 of the code states that “whoever, without authority from the person in charge of any prison or lockup, conveys anything into or out of any such prison or lockup, or delivers to or receives from a prisoner in any such prison or lockup anything whatsoever, shall be liable to imprisonment for three months.”
Section 252 speaks specifically to prison officers, and provides that “if any prison officer or person in charge of any convicted prisoner, knowingly permits him to receive any tobacco, spirits, food, money or any other thing which the prisoner is not permitted by the prison regulations to receive, or to enter any house, yard or premises, not being the place appointed for the labour of the prisoner, he shall be liable to imprisonment for three months.”
Therefore, the law allows a jail term of three months for any prison officer who allows a prisoner to receive contraband from someone else and three months for anyone, including a prison officer, who is found to have given a prisoner an item of contraband.
It would be difficult to prove that a specific prison officer gave an inmate a particular item of contraband without having captured the transaction on video surveillance tapes, most of which the prisonﾒs internal report on the jailbreak noted have been out of order since October 2005.
Two men died in that breakout on January 17 ﾖ murder convict and escapee Neil Brown, who it appears was shot after he had been recaptured and was handcuffed on the prison bus, and Prison Officer Corporal Dion Bowles.
“There prevails within the prison a culture of corruption among a small percentage of staff who have evaded detection,” the report read.
“Considering the fact that inmates in the maximum security unit seldom leave this unit, it is safe to conclude that certain staff members contribute to this vexing problem of contraband, which caused the death of Cpl. Bowles.”
Prison Superintendent Dr. Elliston Rahming told the Journal he would not comment on the reportﾒs findings, since it has not been officially released to the public.
The fact that the Journal has obtained a copy of the report has driven National Security Permanent Secretary Mark Wilson to call the Journal “corrupt” ﾖ when asked to comment on aspects of the report, Mr. Wilson refused, saying to comment would be to “collude” in the Journalﾒs “corruption.”
However, Prime Minister Perry Christie told a room full of reporters after visiting the prison in August that he saw no reason the report ought not be made public, and that he would cause it to be tabled in Parliament once that body resumed meetings.
By: Quincy Parker, The Bahama Journal
