Female ‘deportees’ languish in custody
It doesn’t do much for one’s self-esteem to be labelled a ‘deportee’ here in Jamaica, meaning that you were living abroad but were sent home because of some illegal connections you had overseas. However, from what is emerging on the local scene, deportation of Jamaicans from overseas territories may be a much better preposition than it is for foreign nationals ordered out of Jamaica.
This because unlike the policies in the more developed countries to which Jamaicans tend to flock, deportation from the local soil simply means an order to go home, with no reference to any source of the funds to do so. A number of foreign nationals, including women, have come to learn the harsh realities of that situation over the years. A few are presently languishing indefinitely in local custody as a result of the Jamaican policy.
A middle-aged woman from Ghana in Africa, for example, has long completed her 30-day sentence for overstaying her time in Jamaica, but has since been, and will remain at the Remand Centre in Kingston, until the more than $100,000 needed for air transportation back home is secured. That situation has left her bewildered for sometime, as so far her back remains against the wall.
Even more demoralising for her and others in similar circumstances at the Remand Centre, is the fact that the overall physical arrangements there are much more unpleasant than those at any of the corresponding male or female prisons across the islands. For instance, in prison, the daily lock-down time is far less than at the Remand Centre, where the prisoners are generally kept in their cells almost all the time.
That situation means that because of national security arrangements which dictate that after officially completing prison sentences for whatever crimes or violations foreign ‘deportees’ have to be kept at the Remand Centre, these persons automatically find themselves in harsher circumstances after paying their debts to society.
A 19 year-old Guyanese woman just missed a similar trip from the Fort Augusta Women’s Correctional Centre to the Remand Centre recently. This was because up to two days before she had completed a sentence for entering Jamaica with false documents, no airline ticket was in place for her travel back home. The petite, soft-spoken and despairing Guyanese drew the attention of some charitable organisations during a recent visit to Fort Augusta Prison. However, while Food For the Poor pledged to help and was making arrangements to get her home, a relative of hers in the United States stepped in and bore the responsibility for her trip to Guyana.
