By Pat Roxborough, Staff Reporter
WESTERN BUREAU:
A DELEGATION of officials from the British Prisons, Courts, Customs and Immigration departments is preparing to visit Jamaica for a better understanding of the social and economic factors fuelling the massive numbers of Jamaicans trying to smuggle drugs into their country.
More than half of the foreigners serving time in British prisons are Jamaicans and more than half of the cocaine and marijuana (ganja) intercepted by British authorities at their international airports were found on travellers coming from Jamaica, according to statistics provided by the British High Commission.
"Between April 1999 and March 2000, 278 (62 per cent) of the 450 people arrested at British airports for trafficking cocaine came off flights coming from Jamaica and 94 of the 139 people stopped with cannabis (marijuana) came from Jamaica," an official from the High Commis-sion told The Gleaner.
The statistics will be presented in further detail to the officials at a conference that is being planned for September by Hibiscus, a British charity that looks out for the welfare of jailed women and their families.
Olga Heaven, founder and director of Hibiscus, said she hoped the information that comes out of the conference would provide the basis for penal reform in Britain and Jamaica.
"One of the specific issues that the conference will address is the fact that when a woman gets a heavy jail sentence for drug trafficking, it is her child that is left in Jamaica that really pays the penalty. I mean, look at it realistically. The woman gets three meals a day a roof over her head etc. The children are the ones who are left to suffer," Mrs. Heaven said.
Ideally, after the conference, the delegation which will include one of Britain's senior judges, will be persuaded that the best thing to do in the case of first-time offenders is to take the drugs from them and send them back to their families, she said.
"The long prison sentences are not helping. Most of the time, these first offenders are desperate women in appalling conditions of poverty with a genuine need to fill and I'm not making excuses or rationalising. I'm simply stating a fact that is proved by evidence. Three years ago there were just over 100 Jamaican women in prison in Britain. Now there are over 400," she said.
A file of horror stories detailing the sufferings and devastation facing the families of these women has been put together to support the charity's advocacy effort.
This file highlights a desperate need for money that the local police and other authorities have identified as the predominant factor driving individuals to smuggle drugs.
Realistically, however, Ms Heaven said, she hoped the conference would at least provide a basis for Britain to consider shorter prison sentences and Jamaica to enhance and consolidate existing support services for female foreigners serving prison time here.
The minimum average sentence that the British court imposes on drug traffickers is four years although often, offenders serve half the time. In Jamaica however, most Resident Magistrates impose hefty fines of up to $500,000 and a mandatory 12-month jail sentence on drug traffickers, depending on the weight and type of drug.
There are 34 British and 36 American women in jail here for drug trafficking. Unlike the more than 400 women who are imprisoned in Britain, they do not get the monthly international phone calls to their families abroad.
Ms Heaven said she was trying to make arrangements for a worker attached to Hibiscus to visit the prisoners at least once a week with news from their families.
