The Prime Minister’s opponents have delighted to say that he has at last become serious about our gang crime epidemic by himself taking over responsibility for the police. What actually matters, is not which of two senior Ministers has the portfolio, but the performance of the new Police Commissioner. We must all pray that he lives up to his words and his declared intentions. He is the best hope in our community’s fight against gang crime. I like what I hear. He is prepared to be understanding of an individual’s gang involvement without in any way condoning it, and if people choose to continue criminal gang activity they will have him and a re-invigorated better trained police force to disabuse them of the wisdom of their choice. Don’t expect instant change in criminal activity, nevertheless if CG Walwyn is the leader we need then look for a noticeably higher level of professionalism throughout the force. The right man in the right place at a critical time can turn everything around.
Although this article is about crime, I would pause to say that it is not only the police that require (and now have) a new leader of experience, but also my pet project, The Charlestown Primary School Kitchen. That Kitchen needs a professional chef and sous-chef of quality, whose resume shows that they have run mass catering kitchens, whose references are impeccable, and who know about healthy eating and cooking. There is no reason to suspect that the expertise of the Education Department extends to the skilful assessment of persons who claim to be chefs or cooks. I am sure that the professionals in our midst, the Hotel Association would be glad to help in this assessment. I gather that the Department has had many applicants for a job in the kitchen. If the head chef position should by mischance be given to someone who has cooked in a few restaurants but has no managerial experience then the kitchen would not succeed in its purpose. The parallel for the Police Force might be that a corporal, perhaps related to a Minister is made Commissioner. Enough said.
Whichever Minister takes responsibility for the Police it should not be forgotten that the Police force belongs to and is an extension of the Community. It is our Police Force. If we wish crime to be reduced we have to help our Police. At the recent Conference organised by Dan MacMullin and Operation Future, Police Chief Troy said that a policeman does not get his intelligence, his information, by asking a fellow police officer. It has to come from the Community, you and me. I am fairly sure that we will see a conscious effort under Commissioner Walwyn to make individual police officers more friendly, approachable and trustworthy in the villages and the schools. We must respond.
Another part of the Criminal Justice System is the Prison Service. We have a main prison in Central Basseterre and a prison farm in Nevis. Although we may not have considered it, these prisons belong to us, the Community, as part of State Assets. When the Court sends someone to prison, that is done on our behalf, and a prisoner is then confined in a place and in conditions for which ultimately we are responsible. Sam Condor, may have retained that short straw, responsibility for prisons, but at the end of the day they are our prisons. Most of us are unfamiliar with life inside our main Basseterre prison. We want thieves, burglars, murderers, rapists etc. removed from society so that they may not continue their crimes. We want to feel safe from such criminals. Sometimes a Court feels that the only way the public can be protected from a particular criminal is for him to be confined in prison for a very long time or perhaps until he dies.
Two weeks ago the Anti-Gang Conference facilitators – the Police Chief, The Criminal Court Judge and ex-gang members, all from Canada, toured the Basseterre prison. According to Dan MacMullin who went with them, they and he were shocked and horrified at the conditions. Dan published an article in the newspapers about their visit. Clearly he was anxious about the reception his criticism might meet. I am of the school that believes that we should know of unsatisfactory situations for which we should take responsibility. Some do not agree with this. When I said that a child was sent to school with two slices of white bread and nothing in between for his/her lunch, friend Brantley said I should not have written this and that he felt insulted. My point was to demonstrate the importance of the provision in the schools of a nutritious lunch. If you do not bring out into the open these kind of things they remain hidden under the proverbial carpet and no one does anything to remedy them. That is the case with prison conditions. The trouble is Dan does not tell us in any detail what those conditions actually are. I wish he would. We need an objective no hold barred factual essay. Perhaps conditions are not so bad as he implies. Perhaps they are so bad that if we knew and understood how we are obliging our criminal sons, brothers, fathers to exist, we would say ‘No more!’. In the UK, prisons, some almost as old as ours, are subject to unannounced inspections by HM Inspector of Prisons and his staff. His role is to provide independent scrutiny of prison conditions and treatment of prisoners. He makes comprehensive publically available reports following his visits and expects the prison managers to act on his recommendations. The two most recent reports are critical and relate to prisons that are respectively 50% and 39% over their built capacity. By contrast the Basseterre prison, built in 1840, and designed for 60 prisoners,according to the latest figures now holds 248 inmates.This is just over four times the designed maximum.
In May of this year the US Supreme Court upheld a lower Court Order in a case brought on behalf of inmates of California prisons who alleged that the overcrowded conditions in those prisons amounted to a violation of the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution which offers protection again the infliction of cruel and unusual punishments. The Order required, within a two year period, the release of tens of thousands of prisoners in order to reduce the overcrowding to 137.5% from the actual figure of 200%. The Supreme Court said that this unconstitutional overcrowding compromised inmate health care, and failed to meet basic health needs.
I do not have personal knowledge of existing conditions in our prison but my informant who did told me that he was the last prisoner to be added to a cell holding 26 inmates. There were six bunk beds. I am not sure whether this meant 6 actual beds or 6 x 2 namely 12 beds. Anyway everyone else slept directly on the concrete floor. One blanket each was provided. As last in, he had a choice of the two remaining least favourable positions, either next to the piss pots where prisoners attended to their bodily functions, or next to the door, fully lit and where the warders played loud music.
As I have not seen the inside of the prison under these present conditions I will restrict myself to the opinion that it must be very difficult to keep clean and for any kind of good sanitary conditions to obtain.
The Government is now in some peril. What would our High Court rule if a case was brought on behalf of some inmates in respect of the overcrowding and all that it gave rise to? Section 7 of our Constitution reads ‘A person shall not be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading punishment or other like treatment’. Prisons are not holiday camps, but surely we, the Community, if only we knew, would like to insist on certain basic decent standards. Surely it is not our wish that our Courts commit persons to a place upon whose headstone might be carved:
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”
Syndicated columnist
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