IT is a national disgrace that mentally ill persons are kept in prisons. Many of them ought not to have been locked up in the first place.It is also an index of how unfeeling and uncaring we have become as a people that mentally ill individuals can be "forgotten" in our prison system. Some of them confined for more than 20 years for misdemeanours, which would not have attracted a prison sentence if they had been found guilty in the courts.
We are indebted to Dr. Lloyd Barnett, chairman of the Independent Jamaica Council for Human Rights for bringing these atrocities to public attention. According to Dr. Barnett, 275 inmates at the St. Catherine Adult Correctional Centre and 130 at the Tower Street Centre have been detained because they were found to have been unfit to plead in court. They were therefore in jail at the Governor-General's pleasure, but then the bureaucratic bungling and callousness set in. As Dr. Barnett tells it 200 of them had been certified as fit to plead but were not brought back before the Courts to do so. Instead, they have become forgotten people left to languish in the hellholes of the prisons to be preyed on and sexually assaulted by other inmates.
Our veneer of civilisation is proving to be very thin indeed. We agree with the remedies proposed by Dr. Barnett; that those mentally ill persons who have been imprisoned for long periods should be released, and those who are fit to plead should have speedy trials. We are also in agreement that the Government should provide help for those released from prison and adequate and proper care for those who remain.
The real scandal, however, is that the incarceration of these unfortunates is not a recent development. It is a saga of official neglect from top to bottom.
Many of these inmates have been detained "at the Governor-General's pleasure" the legal designation used in instances where offenders are juveniles or unfit to plead on grounds of mental illness.
The matter has been complicated by an Appeal Court ruling in 1995 that it is unconstitutional to detain persons on those grounds. Subsequent legislation in April this year, removing the powers of the Governor-General in this regard, hit a snag in the Senate on constitutional grounds and was withdrawn.
Since then, however, nothing further has been done; and this despite the long-standing recommendation of the Wolfe Report that persons detained at the Governor-General's pleasure should have their cases reviewed after an initial seven years and annually thereafter.
The Department of Correctional Services has sought to lessen the impact of the disclosure by contending that the numbers claimed are excessive; instead of over 400 the tally is 256, the department says.
The total is irrelevant; not even a single mentally ill person should be exposed to the brutalities alleged, a factor which the department does not address or deny. It is indeed a national disgrace.
