An appeal for more professional help with rehabilitating prisoners has revealed the likelihood that a significant number of them have serious psychological issues and ought really to be hospitalised.
And vast numbers of inmates, who spend almost as much time on remand awaiting sentencing, are denied rehabilitation help because of their presumptive innocence until trial, it was also revealed.
The appeal came from Anthony Holder, Head of Inmate Rehabilitation at Her Majesty’s Prison Dodds, who called for more resources to help prepare prisoners for life beyond bars.
He was also backed by Chief Magistrate Ian Weekes, Mark Headley, a man who served time for manslaughter and the head of the advisory board of the government reform school Dr Lucille Baird on the Man Talk forum on Tuesday evening hosted by Cave Hill Wesleyan Holiness Church.
Holder said: “What we need more is instead of crying down prisons, we need more help. We need the education department in the prison to be run by the Ministry of Education. We need more psychologists. We got one drug counsellor who works closely with NCSA [National Council on Substance Abuse].
“We need more psychologists, we need more drug counsellors, we need many more of these here instead of just saying prison don’t work give us the help, give us the professionals. Then we are seeing a trend, persons with sex offences. We need more professional help; we need more persons. We are doing it, and if we are doing it efficiently with our little resources, wow, what can we do with more resources?”
Chief Magistrate Ian Weekes explained that those who appear before the courts with known mental health issues are sent to the Psychiatric Hospital. But he urged the public to understand that the mental hospital is not a place for sentencing although it offers assistance at times in holding people on remand who need medical intervention.
The Chief Magistrate said: “Sometimes we might have a medical intervention. And then if the family don’t step up to being sureties, and that medical issue has been resolved, there is only one place to send the person. And we as judicial officers do not find that it would be fit at the time to return them to society.
“So, in a case like that, that is where you might have some persons who end up back in prison. And let us not forget, some of these persons are very smart. It is far easier for some persons to say to a judicial officer, why not let me go down to the ‘psych’ as opposed to being remanded at the prison.
“So, sometimes you will have that and sometimes those judicial officers who are very experienced, will not be fooled and will have to exercise the authority to keep them in a more structured environment.”
Mark Headley, who was convicted for manslaughter he committed a decade ago and is now employed following his release from prison raised concern about the absence of rehabilitation for those in custody awaiting trial.
He said he was concerned that there are inmates at HMP Dodds for as long as four years who do not have access to rehabilitation programmes because they are on remand and most of the time leave the institution unable to read or write.
Headley said: “One of the biggest problems is the lack of programmes like Mr Holder rightfully said. We find that persons are interested. When I was there, [it] was something… like 26 juveniles; 21 on the building that I was on, which was J building.
“The only thing that these youngsters had to occupy their minds was television – DVDs, television, whatever the case is. And then sometimes, looking at one another in the eyes because there is nothing else really to help them to become a better person.”
Headley recalled that in a three-month period in 2017, 31 out of 42 inmates could be considered “madmen” or “street characters”.
The former inmate added: “Prison cannot do anything for these persons, so they would go and they would come back. There is a lot that needs to be left. Inmates, when I left, were very frustrated.
“Mr Holder is trying his best to do certain things and put certain things in place and he too has his own challenges for various reasons. There is a lot that the jail requires if it is supposed to really produce the type of inmates and offer the help and assistance that it can really offer.”
Dr Lucille Baird, a former rehabilitation officer who now chairs the advisory board of the Government Industrial School, joined the call for more professionals to go into the prisons to conduct workshops catering to those on remand and juveniles.
While the Prison Act was specially created for the rehabilitation and holistic recovery of inmates, the mandate is not being carried out owing to a lack of professional assistance, she said.
Dr Baird said: “So the question of whether incarceration is really working. It depends on the programmes that they are put through while they are there, and also the category of the lawbreaker. But there are some guys that are there that were hitmen, and let’s face it, when they leave the prison, they know what they are going back to.
“But a lot of them are told you are young if you have committed a crime, by the time you get to a certain age you are going to be released from prison and we got you covered. And a lot of them are schooled in criminality while they are in prison, and they are schooled outside in the communities as well.”
Dr Baird said that under the pending Juvenile Justice Bill, inmates between 16 and 18 will no longer be sent to Her Majesty’s Prison but will be accommodated at the GIS facility which is now being retrofitted. (AH)
