News

Livern Barrett, Gleaner Writer

Investigators from the Public Defender's Office, who are conducting an inspection of jailhouse conditions nationwide, have found one detainee with rotting flesh at the Greater Portmore Police lock-up.

What's worse, Public Defender Earl Witter said his team found no evidence that a medical appointment had been scheduled for the detainee, when they checked "the relevant station registry".

Witter, who had a first-hand look at conditions at the Hunts Bay police lock-up on Wednesday, said his office was also struck by the level of overcrowding observed in some jails.

"What was noteworthy, of course, was the density of the population and the access to bathroom and other sanitary facilities," he told The Gleaner, outside the Hunts Bay Police Station.

"Shades of Constant Spring," he concurred, when asked if what he saw was similar to what obtained at the Constant Spring police lock-up where three detainees suffocated to death in 1992.

These preliminary findings confirm a Gleaner expose, last Friday, about disturbing conditions in a majority of the nation's jails.

Bursting at the seams

The nationwide inspection of police lock-ups, which was triggered by the Gleaner story and complaints by relatives of detainees, was expected to be completed yesterday.

Last Friday, The Gleaner reported that cells across the island are bursting at the seams, in the face of unprecedented overcrowding.

The article pointed to the recently enacted Bail Act and the proliferation of police operations, as the main reasons for the overcrowding.

Witter said the objective of the inspection was to determine whether the treatment of detainees amounted to an infringement of constitutional protection against inhumane and degrading treatment.

He said his office is also looking at the conditions under which policemen and women work.

"Because, like I have said, if those conditions appear to be inhumane and degrading, then they will be hardly encouraged to treat their prisoners in a humane fashion," he added.

livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com