LOW-RISK convicts may no longer have to serve time in prison to pay their debt to society, as the Government renews its push to use electronic monitoring devices to reduce the prison population.

Minister of National Security Robert Montague made the disclosure as he outlined plans to reform the penal system at yesterday’s

Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange.

“If you have a low-risk prisoner, why should the taxpayer of Jamaica maintain a man, three meals a day, house him, buy a TV for him to watch, exercise equipment for him [to use], teach him to read and write and he is relaxing in Richmond Prison…? Why don’t you send him home?” Montague asked.

“Put on an electronic bracelet, geo-fence his house and have his family pay for the monitoring. He has a choice, either him stay with me or him go home under house arrest. His family will feed him, because if they can afford these expensive defence lawyers, they can afford to pay for the monitoring. And, if he steps out of the geo-fence an alarm goes off, you go back for him,” he added.

The minister suggested that judges can utilise the electronic tracking devices by sentencing people to community service instead of ordering them to serve a few days in jail.

“We also will be asking them to use more and more community service orders so that a man who is supposed to go for 10 days [you can] just put on a bracelet and send him go pick up [things off] the road, clean a drain, sweep up the police station, put him in a nice and brightly coloured jumpsuit,” the minister said.

Highlighting that there is a “massive overcrowding” in some prison facilities, the minister said the move is a bid to restructure the prison system and the type of prisoners assigned to each.

“We also want to reclassify the prisoners so that Richmond [and] New Broughton, which are under populated now, we can fully populate. So, if we move out some to home, move more people into Richmond, more into New Broughton we can then convert Tamarind Farm into a medium security facility. Move some of those you have at Tower Street and at St Catherine District that are mixed up with hardened criminals and leave Tower Street and St Catherine to do what they are supposed to do as maximum security prisons,” Montague

said.

“You cannot have hardened criminals being housed with a person who maybe took away two ackees or things like that; because what will happen is the hardened criminal will pass on his knowledge to the less hardened one and also give him messages. One of the phenomena I am finding is that a lot of crime is still being ordered by persons who are incarcerated,” he added.

When asked whether there were resources to fund such an initiative, the minister said: “It costs me $664,000 a few years ago to keep one inmate in house, it costs me $77,000 to keep one person on the electronic monitor. If I can find the $664,000 now I’m sure I can find the $77,000 plus even 10 more. Plus, we will be asking those who we will be sending home for the families to pay for the bracelet.”

Under the reform of the correctional facilities, the minister reiterated that illiterate prisoners would be educated.

“I am of the view that persons who are incarcerated should be reformed,” the minister said. “Prisoners shouldn’t be sitting down in correctional facilities watching television, eating three square meals per day and planning out what they going to do when they come out. One of the things that I have said to the Correctional Department is that prisoners, if they are with me for six months, must learn to read and write before they come out, they must be reformed.”

This, he said, would be accommodated through a partnership with Jamaica Foundation for Lifelong Learning and a Cuban initiative, which teaches individuals to read in eight weeks.

He said he has requested that the psychological analysis conducted on inmates entering the system be revamped and strengthened to test the literacy of the inmates upon entry.

“We have an opportunity to change and if you’re going to stay with me for six months, I have a responsibility, a legal, social and a moral responsibility to make sure that you are literate,” Montague stated.

To facilitate the reform, the minister noted that an audit is being conducted by the Department of Correctional Services to ascertain whether prisoners’ files are up-to-date.

“I do not want to hear that a fellow Jamaican is lost in the system. Somebody who was offered bail, couldn’t pick up the bail and is left in the system for 10 or 15 years [or] somebody who is being held at somebody’s pleasure and is left in the system,” he noted.

“Every human body must be attached to a file and, if not, we have to find out why they are in there because there are instances where persons have completed their time but remained as our guests. It happened with one gentleman in Richmond who completed his time but refused to go home, because it was better than the conditions he had at home,” said Montague.