The horrendous conditions described by inmates at the Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre and published in yesterday’s Sunday Observer might not have come as a complete surprise to those who pay keen attention.

Yet, even they will have been greatly disturbed.

Jamaica’s correctional system has long been in crisis. Hard political realities dictate the situation. Elected governments are not going to give priority attention to prisons when scarce resources can barely meet popularly perceived essentials such as health, education, housing, and resource support for the security forces.

To be fair, successive governments have managed to expand accommodation in the correctional system in recent years. Most notable have been the Horizon Remand Centre, opened in 2002, and the Metcalfe Street Juvenile Remand Centre, opened in 2011, with a capacity to accommodate 208 teenage offenders. Back in 2011 the Metcalfe Street facility was said to be in line with international standards.

This newspaper is also aware of incremental improvements in the attention paid to female wards, especially since that horrific fire at Armadale in 2009.

But, largely because of the country’s outrageously high crime rate, the fundamental problems of overcrowding and dire inadequacy of accommodation in Jamaica’s prisons and correctional centres remain. Hence we are told in yesterday’s report that the Tower Street facility, popularly referred to as General Penitentiary, housed 1,659 men in March, though accommodations are only meant for 800.

Again, to be fair, the authorities at the political level — so far as this newspaper is aware — have not professed ignorance or sought to cover up.       

Note the comment from National Security Minister Peter Bunting in March that: “Many…young men are incarcerated with hardened criminals, given limited opportunities for rehabilitation, and confined to cramped overcrowded cells with no modern sanitary conveniences for 18 hours per day.”  

Mr Bunting added: “We should not be surprised that many of these persons see no option but to return to a criminal lifestyle”.

The national security minister spoke then in the context of plans to transform the correctional services through a five-year strategic plan being developed in partnership with the United Kingdom Government. The main objectives, Mr Bunting said then, were to strengthen the systems of rehabilitation; reduce reoffending; and comply with international human rights standards.

It seems to us, though, that the appalling conditions described yesterday, especially in relation to sanitation at Tower Street, can’t wait. The situation constitutes an open invitation to deadly diseases and public endangerment.

Jamaicans should not be so naïve as to believe that a disease epidemic in prison will remain there.

As a matter of the greatest urgency, in the public interest, the authorities must seek to address, as best as possible, the sanitation issues at Tower Street and any other correctional facility where such conditions may exist.

By the way, has the prison system been factored into the plans to fight Ebola should it come here?

We await word from the Government.