Well done, VernaSEAN DOUGLAS Sunday, March 21 2010
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OPPOSITION Senators Verna St Rose-Greaves (right) and Mervyn Assam....
CONGRATULATIONS to new Opposition Senator Verna St Rose-Greaves for bringing down to earth last Tuesday’s Senate debate on the Prison (Amendment) Bill 2010. She injected the parliamentary chamber with the harsh realism of prison life, not just faced by the inmates themselves, but also by their loved ones.
St Rose-Greaves cried for the victims of crime, sadly recalling the funeral for the four members of a family from Gonzales, Belmont, who were recently murdered.
She mourned the late Akiel Chambers.
St Rose-Greaves hit the Bill’s amendments as vain and reactionary.
“They are vain because I see these amendments only as a stop gap measure, a plaster on a pus-filled sore — a pus-filled sore which is our prison system in Trinidad and Tobago.”
St Rose-Greaves, in pleading the cause of prisoners, their families, prison officers and victims of crime, really espoused the highly laudable view that a rising tide lifts ALL boats. “We can’t discuss prisons without discussing crime,” she sensibly observed. St Rose-Greaves even suggested the debate shift from the plush Senate chamber to jail where Senators could see what they were debating.
St Rose-Greaves shared her own experiences as a social activist and social worker, to spell out the pain of the families of inmates.
She hit the inadequacy of prison facilities in Tobago.
“Many years ago, when we did not have fast ferries to Tobago, I would have to leave my bed very early in the morning to get to the port to pick up mothers and grandmothers who would have to leave Tobago to come to Trinidad in order to feed their children and grandchildren who would be at the Golden Grove Prison.
“Mr President, I have cried so many tears with those mothers and grandmothers because they would have spent all night on the boat, come in tired and would not even have time to have a proper wash or brushing of their teeth, would have to rush up to the Golden Grove Prison and wait for very long periods ...”
St Rose-Greaves said Tobagonians are upset their youngsters are jailed in Trinidad, where they mix with hardened criminals, and become more proficient in crime. “I am here demanding a statement from the Minister of National Security as to why this situation has been allowed to continue without any urgent move to address this problem.” The Senate applauded.
Later in reply Minister of National Security, Martin Joseph, said his Ministry had hitherto not had a location to build a new jail, but added that the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) has recently indicated a facility that could now be made available to build a prison. “I do not want to say whether it is Friendship or what. I cannot remember where the location is, but a location has now been identified,” said Joseph.
St Rose-Greaves hit jail conditions. “The Government is no longer able to hide what the public and the prison staff have known and have been saying for a very long time, that our prisons are overrun by illicit, illegal, underground activity, inclusive of sex, cellphones, drugs and other contraband...”.
Urging more attention be paid to the very design of prisons, she dubbed the country’s jails “dark, dank, hell-holes, devoid of light, natural or otherwise”.
She noted the Port of Spain Jail was built in 1812, which happens to be the year of the Napoleon Bonaparte’s infamous invasion of (and retreat from) Russia!
“This place is not fit for animals, let alone human beings. Men sleeping head-to-toe in a cell, packed in like sardines, some without mattresses and without proper bedding layered from ceilings in hammocks straight down to the floor on cardboard. The stench of human and cat urine soaked into a hundred-year old concrete floor.”
Night brings more hazards.
She said, “In the evening, they must stuff their ears and their nostrils. They must put bread in a corner to deflect the cockroaches from crawling into their unguarded orifices”.
There are also human pests. “It is in the evening that men must press their backs against the wall, afraid to sleep. Their cries and protestations can be heard as they grow faint and change with time. How does a man admit in a hostile environment, that he was raped in prison, that he has had sex with other men or that he was forced to put on a sex show for some perverted senior official?”
She recalled a judge in 2003 refusing to jail an effeminate rapist because he would likely be raped in jail.
She asked what is being done to help women prisoners see their children.
“Why are under-aged boys housed at YTC (Youth Training Centre). Why are our girls placed in the Women’s Prison?”, asked St Rose-Greaves.
St Rose-Greaves urged more help for the families left behind when men are incarcerated.
“ How are the basic needs of their families met in their absence? What about earnings for work done while in prison and what money do they leave prison with?. We need to ask and answer questions of whether in 2010, we should incarcerate certain categories of prisoners, for example, men who fail to pay maintenance. Will it not be better served if they are put to work and the money remitted to their children? We have seen at least two men in this country go into prison for maintenance and die in the prison, killed.”
St Rose-Greaves said the awful practice of “slopping out” degraded inmates and their guards.
“By the clock, I see it is 2.47 pm. At this precise time, the prisoners would be now moving to empty their slop buckets left to bubble overnight. This stench, while it may be unbearable to you and to I, but so accustomed to them. You would probably see young men put their hands into a plastic salt beef bucket to scrub and dislodge faecal matter. You would see prisons officers with pain of their faces, because this has also become their life. “Imagine, grown men and women held in cells without sanitary facilities, forced to defecate and urinate in the presence of their fellow prisoners without privacy, in bottles, plastic bags and on paper, to be poured into plastic buckets provided for the purpose. And we talk about human rights!”
She said slopping out occurred at Carrera Island Prison where for 100 years raw faeces has been dumped in the sea.
Later Martin Joseph admitted slopping-out occurs, saying, “Toilet facilities at the Remand Yard, the Port-of-Spain Prisons and the women prisons, yes, they use pails. At Golden Grove, YTC and MSP (Maximum Security Prison, Golden Grove), there are in-cell and in-dormitory toilet facilities. At Carrera, inmates spend most of the day outside and there are toilet facilities available for their use. However, at nights, they have to use slop-pails in their cells.”
St Rose Greaves said raw faeces goes into the sea around Carerra. “There is a hole there where they empty the buckets. This is what the prisoners use during the day as a latrine, and the waste goes straight into the sea”.
In reply, Joseph seemed not to know or reluctant to say, simply acknowledging her concerns by saying, “Your point is noted”.
St Rose Greaves kept hammering the twin themes of prison-reform and crime- reduction, saying, “There will be no reduction in crime if the Government does not take the necessary and appropriate action to deal with prison reform”.
Largely blaming crime on drugs and guns, she said, “Who is benefitting from this situation? Is the Government serious about tackling this two-headed snake? And if so, what are they doing about it, except to hope that perhaps we would kill all the offenders and the problem would go away?”.
Lamenting 550 murders in a year, she hit, “Already in 2010, in the first three months as I stand here now we are two short of 100. I am pained but I am not afraid to say to the Government that you have failed!”. St Rose Greaves implored the Government to accept help to improve jails. “Here are so many people in this country who have done this work, who understand what is happening on the ground, who will be willing to partner to make these things happen, very simple basic things that can happen to change the prison culture.” These includes NGOs such as Women Working for Social Progress , and academics such as Prof Ramesh Deosaran. “We do not have to go and get anybody from outside to come and help us. The information is there, the data is there. What we need is the political will and a government who cares enough to make it happen.”
In his wind-up, Martin Joseph admitted that the better-outfitted Maximum Security Prison was not filled because of problems with the electronic-gates, and the sewerage system.
Regarding other queries, he promised, “I am going to get some more information and provide responses to Senators”. The Senate passed the Bill.
