Dear Editor,

Even though Vybz Kartel is supposed to be imprisoned in a maximum security establishment, he has continued to release hit songs. Gone are the days when people who are sent to prison are locked away in some dark hole, cut off from the rest of civilisation and forgotten. This is especially true of prisoners (or, as they are sometimes called, “guests of the State”) who are serving terms that will end sometime in the future. Modern rehabilitation, these days, no longer involves prisoners just having access to books in a library. Nowadays, they have access to the Internet, and such access has, married to it, benefits and problems.

I saw a news item some time ago where prisoners were allowed to continue their education — using the internet. Others are allowed to use modern devices to make music, and the like. Of course, one may rightly argue that nothing is wrong with these inmates being given the chance to continue do these things, as these are seen as parts of their rehabilitation. However, such access comes, I think, with some risks.

If prisoners have Internet access, what is to stop a hardened criminal, who refuses to be rehabilitated, from using that platform to, for example, continue leading his criminal gang from inside the relative security of prison? Of course, I am not here saying that Vybz Kartel is leading any gang, post-incarceration, but access to the Internet allows prisoners to effectively communicate with the outside world as much as they would if they were not in prison.

I am not too sure what filters are being used in the prisons, but new sites are being created practically every day that allow people to talk to, or at least text people — and for free. So who really needs cellphones, come to think of it? The ability of many prisons, especially those in countries like ours, to curtail prisoners’ ability to still communicate with the outside world is questionable. We may only be able to keep supposedly dangerous prisoners inside prisons physically.

The modern prison warder will no longer just must to be a strong man with a long temper and baton. He also, nowadays, has to be some sort of cyber security expert. How many such well-trained prison officers are there in prison systems, especially in countries like ours?

Those who construct and manage modern prisons, or should I say “rehabilitation facilities”, therefore have a decision to make: Should they go back to the days when these facilities are prisons, in the harshest sense of the term, which possibly negatively impact the rehabilitation of prisoners, or should they adopt modern practices and technologies that, arguably, negatively impact the rest of society?

Michael A Dingwallmichael_a_dingwall@hotmail.com

Michael A Dingwall

michael_a_dingwall@hotmail.com