REESE. we have done over the entire manual and it is going to go to the ministry for review and approval

THE programme for the conditional release of prisoners, which was suspended last year, has been amended and is to be sent to the security ministry for approval.

The security ministry suspended the programme last April following the escape of an inmate who was allowed to visit relatives because of his good behaviour.

"The draft is complete. (and it) has been sent to the police commissioner (Francis Forbes). Once we have his response we'll be sending it to the ministry," Major Richard Reese, head of the Correctional Services Department, told the Observer .

The prison boss said he was expecting a response from the police commissioner within another three weeks.

The amendments were made between October and December last year during a review of the programme - six months after the escape of murder convict, Lloyd "Father" Reece, who was doing life in prison.

Reece entered the island's prison system in 1983 after being sentenced to die. But his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1995 because of his good behaviour. He subsequently qualified for conditional release last year, also on the basis of his continued good behaviour after what was by then 20 years of incarceration.

"He had been involved in a number of programmes, including presentations at schools, culturally and so on. (He was) almost a model inmate," Major Reese said. The inmate, just before his escape, was at the point of applying for his parole date.

The Conditional Release programme, Major Reese said, would help to ensure his smooth reintegration into the society, provided he was granted parole.

"For inmates who are incarcerated, there is a parole eligibility date and an early release date. If they apply for parole and they are successful, they could be released before the time.

The concept basically is to move them into conditional release, then they would go into parole. It is like you have supervised release and then you go into parole," explained the prison boss.

"In his (Reece's) case, you'd eventually have a parole eligibility date... He was just at the point of applying for parole...," added Major Reese.

On the day of his escape, Reece was allowed leave from behind bars to undertake voice training at a music studio.
It was unclear what the security arrangements were at the time, but his escape forced the suspension of the programme for review, following a directive from the security ministry.

"The ministry required a review of the programme to ensure that it satisfied certain security requirements... gave us some guidelines from a security point of view. We have done over the entire manual and it is going to go to the ministry for review and approval," Major Reese told the Observer. "Once the review is completed, we will go back into our programme," he added.

The review was undertaken by representatives from the Attorney General's and Correctional Services departments, and retired members of the judiciary.

"We had a multi-disciplinary group that went through it... And we have had drafts circulated to other stakeholders internally, like our institutional superintendents and so forth," Major Reese said.

The manual has now been amended to have a new category of prisoners eligible for the programme, to allow for tighter security procedures and to ensure a more rigorous assessment of an inmate's risk of flight.

But even with this improved approach to the programme, the prison boss said that there would always be an element of risk and that they would, as such, proceed in the main on a case-by-case basis.

"For instance, even if you are going to undertake work to bush a cemetery, you have to have a security plan, you have to risk and assess each inmate who is going to participate in that work pogramme and look at how they conducted themselves during incarceration," he said.

Under the Conditional Release programme, there is:

. day release;
. work release for training;
. release for employment and special occasions;
. compassionate release; and
. weekend passes for inmates to visit their families.

"All that is part of preparing them to get back into their family. They don't have any contact for 10, 15 years and you just send them back, there is a lot of adjustment that has to take place in the family," added Major Reese.

Meanwhile, he said that they had already begun the risk needs assessment of prisoners at the St Catherine District Prison, which should help determine their eligibility for the programme when it is again up and running.

"We'll be assessing those coming in and the long-termers. And then we'll do the medium-termers," he said. Training of staff members to undertake the management of the programme would follow, he added.

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