THE EDITOR, Sir:
THIS AN open letter to the President of the Jamaican Bar Association regarding the decision taken to "body search" lawyers when they visit their clients in custody.
I have spoken to a female colleague who informs me that on her visit to the place called "New Horizon Remand Centre" she had another female run her hand over and "pat down" every part of her body including in the region of her genitalia.
I have to tell you that such invasion of my body by a stranger of whatever gender, is intolerable and unbearable. I am not a criminal, I have done nothing to forfeit or give up my constitutional human rights to privacy and inviolability of my person and I cannot just sit back and allow these rights to be compromised.
The only thing I am guilty of is representing persons accused of wrong doing; seeking to protect them from the tyranny inherent in the concentration of power in one source and through these very clients and the commitment to procedural law to help to secure our country from descending into barbarism. Already access to clients has been severely curtailed. Visits are now limited to between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.. Just last week I was informed by letter from the Correctional Services that Saturday visits which are fixed between 10 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. are a privilege allowed in special circumstances. Sunday visits are out. Remember lawyers are in court from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on week days.
Visits to persons in custody are by law and in my experience within the sight of the security officers. Remandees are subject to searches at any time, including immediately before and after their lawyers' visits. Why then the need for these indignities to be imposed on attorneys? The cynical and the disenchanted would say that it is to impede and discourage legal representation. Better to think that there is some prevailing naiveté which limits good people's ability to see how, by using the excuse of specific transgressions to cast a blanket of doubt and guilt and oppression on a broad cross-section of the population, we can cause our country to sink into further barbarism.
CANNOT BEAR IT
Whatever the motive, whatever the explanation I have to say that I personally cannot bear it. Perhaps I beat the air!
But I will have to gradually withdraw
my participation in the criminal justice system. I will have to withdraw my services for the representation of persons on Legal Aid and I ask that you kindly find someone to replace me as the Bar's Association's representative to the Legal Aid Council unless some solution, in keeping with the ideals of our legal system and Constitution, can be found.
I am etc.,
JACQUELINE SAMUELS-BROWN
Kingston
