Why Did We Turn Down the Prison Deal?
Let me try and make some sense of this.
I heard that the sitting Prime Minister just refused the “prison deal” from the U.K.
I remember he said that he would rather have the building of schools than prisons. Many of us agree with the PM.
First off, when we gained our Independence we were saying that we wanted to stand independently as a self sustaining nation. In essence, when you leave your parents house, ‘you a big man/woman’ and you are going to stand on your own two feet. We were saying that we wanted to govern ourselves and take care of our own people.
A few years ago some human rights people, after assessing our correctional facilities, concluded that they were deplorable, extremely overcrowded, and inhumane. If I’m not mistaken most of the nation’s prisons have not been renovated since slavery.
What’s the point of having inadequate facilities that don’t encourage rehabilitation? ?.
Another point to make is that we have a high crime rate, and whenever we decide to get serious we will eventually need a proper place to house offenders. Some of us will say well who cares about prison conditions. Not everyone that is thrown into prison remains there for life.
We need to have adequate conditions to rehab them. Some will be rehabilitated and sent back into society, and at least should be kept in humane conditions while they serve their sentence. Basic living conditions is a “Human Right” when someone is in state custody. The people who work in these detention centers should also have a decent place to work. We have not made any improvements to these facilities, just like we haven’t upgraded our hospitals and try to provide emergency services for the Jamaican people.
Our issue today with infrastructure is not the responsibility of the Brits. So if we want to be cocky and refuse the prison, should we look for or accept anything else?
Let’s look at it logically. Cameron was funding 40 percent. That’s a lot, and we are badly in need of improvement to that infrastructure. When people heard prison and started crying reparation, Cameron stated his intention going to allocate 300 million £ across the Caribbean for infrastructure and other things. We wouldn’t call it reparation but that’s what it is.
I look at it this way:
1). The deal would solve the prison infrastructure issue among other things that fall on the lap of the Jamaican society in terms of the consequences of not having adequate correctional facilities. I sometimes wonder if those guys are really being rehabilitated since we don’t even have a good building let alone all they need to rehabilitate. Rehabilitation is important because most ‘a come back a road’.
2). Those prisoners from the U.K. would have to serve their time anyway. They would be deported anyway. Would we be okay if Cameron had just bypassed their sentences and put them on a plane back? I’m sure they would like that. But would we? He opted to save his taxpayers the burden, instead of keeping and feeding by funding 40 percent of the cost of the facility which we desperately need anyway. I don’t see that as a bad deal at all. If the shoes were reversed and Jamaica had a prison filled with foreigners up for deportation and it was costing us an arm and leg, we would probably try to lift the burden off our people too.
In the U.K., Jamaica is third highest on the list of foreign countries with nationals serving prison sentences. Almost 70% of the Jamaicans in prison in Britain are serving sentences for violence and drug offences.
In the end, we have nothing to lose. It is something that we need and one day will have to fund on our own.
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