MONTEGO BAY, St James — The Government is looking at alternative means of managing the custody of low-risk prisoners so as to ease overcrowding in jails.

National Security Minister Dr Horace Chang spoke of the plan in response to a query from a corporal during the Jamaica Police Federation 81st Jamaica Police Federation annual conference at Hilton Hotel in St James on Tuesday.

“What we’ve been having in terms of further discussions is how we can maybe reduce the numbers, not by asking you to reduce your work but by putting some people on community service using electronic monitoring, etc,” he said.

However, some things would need to be done, including research, to get to that type of system in place.

“What I’m hoping we can do is to separate the hard-core criminals, who we need to keep in lock up, from those who are less offensive, and use other means of holding them,” he said.

“I think that the route we’ll have to go is to begin to use other means of monitoring the wrongdoers, especially those who are not what you call high-risk criminals,” he posited.

Overcrowding in police lock-ups has long been a problem, and over the years police personnel, attorneys and civil society groups have lobbied for improvements to the conditions.

The corporal, who is based in St Andrew, labelled the situation he faces each day in his division as “chronic”.

“At my jail it is gazetted for 15 and we have 26 persons now on remand plus another 15, which will put us over 40,” he said.

Chang acknowledged the challenges but explained that the Administration has had to give more focus to other issues.

“In fairness and to be blunt with you, usually we don’t see the jail space as the first priority but we [do] keep them in good order. It’s about keeping them sanitary and clean, but we haven’t gotten about building additional jail space in the lock-ups as opposed to prisons in the correctional service,” he said.

The matter, he said, is attracting attention within the constabulary and outside.

“The judiciary is interested and I think your senior officers are. Between the federation, this commissioner, and senior officers, we have to look at that because there will be problems as you do the work and bring in the criminals,” he stated.

“It may mean constructing more jail space, and that will take a little time, but we will have to move on it aggressively,” Chang said.