NON-PROFIT organisation Stand Up for Jamaica continues to question how mentally ill individuals can be placed behind bars.

Pointing to the case of Noel Chambers, an 81-year-old man who died in the custody of a facility after a 40-year wait for trial, the advocacy group laments that there is a need for “urgent change”.

Chambers was deemed unfit to plea when he was charged with murder and incarcerated on February 4, 1980. He died on January 27, 2020 from a severe kidney infection.

“Mentally ill inmates cannot be fit to plead and need to be diverted to community mental health care; and [there is need] for a modern, forensic psychiatric facility to be built to provide treatment for the most severe cases. The Ministry of Health has been providing for some of them while courthouses still send them to prison,” Carla Gullotta, executive director at Stand Up for Jamaica, told the Jamaica Observer in an interview.

“While international scrutiny and the work of human rights activists have inculcated a greater focus on human rights issues behind bars, the treatment of mentally ill prisoners remains a significant concern,” Gullotta continued.

She said despite the efforts of correctional administrators, mentally ill inmates will continue to present a significant challenge because of the danger they pose not only to other prisoners and correctional officers, but also to themselves.

“These are issues which plague correctional services in Jamaica and put the country at risk of violating basic human rights provisions enshrined in international law. It is for this reason that we promote the call for a change to be made in the justice system with how inmates’ right to a fair trial is systematically ignored. For persons deemed unfit to plead, we urge the courts to divert these persons to the mental health clinics which have been established by the Ministry of Health.”

In 2019, Gullotta said some 313 mentally ill people were locked away in correctional institutions across the island, even though they’re not supposed to be there.

Director of medical services at the Department of Correctional Services, Dr Donna Royer-Powe had said that there is nowhere to adequately accommodate them.

The following year, the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) called for the establishment of psychiatric facilities for prisoners with mental health issues, following the death of Chambers.

Then INDECOM Commissioner Terrence Williams had said that when he was found upon his death, Chambers was chronically emaciated and severely malnourished. He noted that his body was covered with vermin bites and that there were live bed bugs — popularly called chink in Jamaica — all over his body and that he was suffering from bed sores.

Williams said it was clear that Chambers was a victim of inhumane treatment in our prisons.

In 2021, consultant psychiatrist and therapist Dr Wendel Abel had said that considering the widespread issue of mental health in prisons, a mental health-care programme in Jamaica’s penal system is long overdue.

This came after Matthew Samuda, then minister without portfolio in the Ministry of National Security, announced that the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) was authorised to hire a consultant forensic psychiatrist who will design and oversee a forensic mental health-care programme.

Gullotta told Your Health Your Wealth that inmates are hostages captured among different agencies which are supposed to deal with their trials and their sentences.

“DCS may be an insufficient executor but fundamental focus has to be on the justice system and its lack of accountability. Pending trials, courthouses not sending notifications about court dates, poor professional performance from some attorneys,” were among some of the issues, she lamented.