According to Barbados-based criminal justice scholar Dr Janeille Matthews, Jamaica is one of the few exceptions in the Caribbean region, where there isn’t a troubling imprisonment problem, with statistics challenging that of international prisons.

Matthews is a research coordinator of the faculty of law’s UWI Rights Advocacy Project (U-RAP) at The University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill, with a focus on Caribbean criminal law and crime policy.

“As a region we have an incarceration problem. With the exception of Jamaica, most countries have incarceration rates well above international average of 145 inmates per 100,000 inhabitants. I don’t have all of the post-pandemic rates yet, and I note that some countries like Antigua and Barbuda have tried to bring these numbers down during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s simply not enough,” Matthews said during a presentation on contemporary issues affecting Caribbean prisons at a two-day symposium on prison reform hosted by Improved Access (IMPACT) to Justice in the Caribbean at the St Kitts Marriott Resort in the country last week.

“And so this tendency to want to lock people up seems to happen with little regard to due process and fundamental rights because the region has a sizeable number of people on remand. In Trinidad and Tobago more than half of those who are incarcerated have not yet been convicted. Trinidad and Tobago even has a remand facility where people can languish for up to 14 years without a conviction in conditions that threaten health and safety,” she continued.

Further, Matthews said in countries such as Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, and The Bahamas, there are prisons that are filled beyond capacity, whilst countries like Jamaica, St Lucia, and the British Virgin Islands, and Anguilla are rapidly approaching full capacity.

Joyce Stone, deputy commissioner of corrections at the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) confirmed, revealing that only two of the islands institutions are currently over capacity — the St Catherine Adult Correctional Centre and Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre.

“In fact, one of our facilities was shut down because of the very small population of inmates,” Stone told the Jamaica Observer.

However, the criminal law lecturer pointed out that, with the exception of countries like Jamaica, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago, there aren’t many murders in many Caribbean countries.

What this means, she explained, is that many people are languishing unfairly and citizens are oftentimes unaware.

“The fact that our prisons are, in fact, overrun simply because people haven’t gone to trial yet, that’s not something that the general population knows. They assume it’s these people who are just criminals, who have done the worst of the worst,” Matthews said, arguing that most people who are in prisons aren’t the bad elements they are perceived to be.

“We’re in month seven and Antigua has just had its fourth murder. So it means that the people overwhelmingly occupying some of the institutions are not necessarily the boogeyman that they are thought to be in public imagination. As we talk about incarceration and prison conditions, we can’t forget police station lock-ups where people are temporarily detained, which has retained the same violence by which they were characterised at their 18th century inception.”

She exampled Barbados, where, in a recent study, 53 per cent of those detained said that they were “hit or subjected to physical force” at the police station.

Matthews said the same study found that in The Bahamas, 43 per cent of people detained said the same, while in Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago, that figure fell to a “still worrying” 34 to 35 per cent.

But Justice Jacob Wit, a judge at the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), condemned the ill-treatment of prisoners.

“What we can find in our constitution is that prisoners shall be treated with respect due to their inherent dignity and value as human beings. No prisoner shall be subjected to, all prisoners shall be protected from torture and other cruel or degrading treatment or punishment,” he said.

“It also says the safety and security of prisoners, staff, and service providers shall be ensured at all times. Those are very fundamental principles.”