Insecure lock-ups and prisons

THE EDITOR, Madam:

IT WAS reported in the news on one of our television stations at 7 p.m. on May 11, that two prisoners had escaped from the Tower Street Correctional Facility. The report clearly stated that the two prisoners had escaped by scaling of the wall. In light of the previous jail break at that same facility there in October of last year, I thought that arrangements would have been made to prevent that route of escape.

If this continues, then it shows that anyone can scale the wall at any time at that facility.

A simple remedy to this wall scaling situation is to post sentry boxes at certain positions at a reasonable seeing distance so that the prisoners can be seen climbing the wall. I am sure that the wall takes quite some time to climb, so this would provide enough time for the sentries to observe what is going on and do something about it.

On the other hand, a few days later, I heard that 50 people had escaped from the Denham Town Remand Centre. What was interesting was the fact that one of our newspapers reported that only ten of the 68 officers were on duty at the time that this happened. In light of this no one should be surprised that some inmates took advantage of the situation where only 15 per cent of the officers were on duty.

One could not help to wonder why everyone did not just stroll out, but maybe the other prisoners are waiting for a more opportune time to do so. I am sure it would look bad for the prisoners to escape all at once, then everyone who worked there would have no job, including the officers, the cooks, the laundry people, the cleaning people and so on.

If we continue in this way as a nation, this could leave a bad impression of our country and in particular the authorities.

I am etc.,

ANDREW SHAKESPEARE, 119 Border Ave., Kingston 19, Via Go-Jamaica

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