STATE minister in the Ministry of National Security Pearnel Charles Jr on Thursday chided people who have raised questions about the amount of attention given to incarcerated Jamaicans.

“Just because they’ve committed a crime, it doesn’t mean they’re not men,” Charles Jr said at a ceremony to hand over care packages to inmates at Tamarind Farm Adult Correctional Centre in Spanish Town, St Catherine. “Many persons in our society have committed worse crimes than you and they’ve not been locked up.”

Charles Jr argued that some of these criminals who are roaming free are the same individuals querying why money was being spent on prisoners.

“These care packages [are] just a drop in a very big bucket. We cannot help you with as much as you need, but this is a start,” he said while insisting that it was important for prisoners to know that they are valued.

“The care packages that we have here will include underwear, toothpaste, toothbrush, rags, and tissue — simple and basic things that everyone should have,” he said.

According to the prison’s Director of Rehabilitation Shawn Shepherd Anderson, the care packages — which were distributed to the 191 inmates at the facility — are to supplement basic items that the prisoners use daily.

“Today we are trying to give out care packages because we realised that of the 3,000 inmates [islandwide], about 2,800 don’t have family support and help,” she said. “These small care packages will go a long way in making these inmates feel a sense of dignity as human beings.”

During his address, Charles Jr encouraged the prisoners to take advantage of the rehabilitation programmes at the facility and to fight the stigma of being ex-prisoners when they reintegrate into society.

“Let me remind you where we are coming from as a country, when you didn’t have to be a prisoner to have a rope around your neck, and a lot of the reasons you are here flows from that history of violence,” he said, adding that a very deliberate system had been put in place to deprive some people of certain opportunities.

“My father, too, was incarcerated, never forget that,” said Charles Jr, referring to veteran politician Pearnel Charles’ detention in 1976 in the run-up to the general election that year. Charles spent 283 days in detention at Up Park Camp during the infamous state of emergency declared by the then Michael Manley-led Government.

“So when I stand up and look at the cycle of life, me — a prison baby — am now in charge of prisons,” he said.

The junior minister also hailed Tamarind Farm, a medium security prison, as a model institution and lauded its training programmes and the overall good behaviour of the inmates.

According to Superintendent Baldwin Collins, who is in charge of the institution, inmates have been benefiting from academic schooling since September when Food For the Poor opened three classrooms at the facility.

The state minister said he intends to have similar schools in other prisons to provide the same “good environment” for inmates to earn their remedial, intermediate, Jamaica School Certificate, and Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate courses.

Superintendent Collins also revealed that an additional 17 acres of land will be made available to the prison to cultivate cabbage, pak choi, callaloo, cucumbers, and pumpkins to help sustain the facility and other prisons across the island.

The cultivation is scheduled to start in the first quarter of 2018.

Meanwhile, director of communications at the Department of Correctional Services Dexter Thompson called on the private sector to be more instrumental in the rehabilitation and reform process for prisoners.

“We would like corporate Jamaica to come visit these guys, because they are our children, brothers, fathers, and neighbours, and when they come back into society we need to ensure that they are properly reintegrated and will not return to these institutions but become worthwhile members of society,” he said.