Prime Minister Perry Christie yesterday expressed concern for the prison officers and inmates working and living at Her Majesty’s Prison, admitting that conditions at the facility must be improved.
Mr Christie’s comments came shortly after he toured the prison compound on Fox Hill Road Thursday morning. His visit to HMP marked the first of its kind for any sitting prime minister of the country.
“There are two overriding impressions that I am leaving with, which constitute major challenges for the government of the country and challenges that should be addressed,” he told reporters yesterday after the tour. Members of the press were not allowed to accompany Mr Christie on the tour.
“The first is that we must move more quickly and hopefully more effectively in the effort to improve the conditions under which the prisoners and officers live and work,” the prime minister admitted. “It would be incorrect, to put it mildly, if I were not to say that the living conditions for single officers ought to be addressed immediately.
“With respect to the second overriding impression which gives pain really, it is easy for us to speak from a criminological or sociological point of view about the large number of young men that are wasting their lives, committing offences for which they are being imprisoned,” he continued. “It’s another thing to come and see the conditions under which they live.”
Mr Christie implied that the unfit physical conditions at the prison may hinder the rehabilitation process for inmates.
“The very physical conditions under which (inmates) have to be residents here in maximum security may itself work against any effort and real hope of rehabilitation,” he said. “I know that there is a school of thought in our country that speaks to people who have committed vile offences must undergo whatever level of punishment that the prison services offer.
“Punishment that even goes to the root of their existence and how they live. Whether (they are) confined to a cell, whether people who are charged with repeated vagrancy are housed with hardened criminals and whether five or thirty-five in a particular area are put in areas where clearly we are not supposed to have that many because we have no other choice at this present time.”
However, Mr Christie insisted that prison overcrowding and conditions are partially to blame on ancient facilities.
“We have just become the victims of very old facilities that have become very difficult to have a sustained maintenance programme on,” he said. “And very serious contemplation must be given to replacing those facilities.”
In a move to keep inmates from becoming repeat offenders, the prime minister said the government planned to implement a system that tracks inmates released from HMP.
“The reason why I have chosen to speak so strongly about the conditions which those maximum security inmates live under is because they are released back into society,” he said.
“I am happy to say that several weeks ago I was able to speak to the Commissioner of Police (Paul Farquharson) and the Superintendent of Prisons (Dr Elliston Rahming) about putting in place a tracking system to ensure that we are able to not just know that prisoners are being released but to track them from being released. Not next year, but now.”
By: JASMIN BONIMY, The Nassau Guardian
