NASSAU, BAHAMAS — A high-medium prison constructed to American Correctional Association (ACA) standards is among one of the many plans underway on the Ministry of National Security’s agenda in 2023 for the Bahamas Department of Corrections (BDOCS), and Human Rights Activist, and Director of Equality Bahamas, Alicia Wallace said that the upgrades are absolutely necessary.
In addition to the high-medium prison; training for prison and other law enforcement officers, a new juvenile facility, and courses for ex-convicts to assimilate back into society with the goal of reducing the level of recidivism, are also parts of the overall plan.
Wallace explained that an individual’s human right should still be upheld, saying that a person, having the right of being in a clean environment and access to healthcare fits into that description.
“We have to consider that the prison, should not just be for punishment, we often focus a lot on punishment after we’ve gone through the so-called, justice system, but don’t necessarily consider that these people will re-enter society.”
About 98 percent of offenders convicted and sentenced to prison will return to society at some point according to the Minister of National Security, Wayne Munroe, that considered, Wallace stressed the importance of maintaining a prisoner’s dignity and personhood while they serve out their time in BDOCS.
“So there’s this idea that, we say all the time that this person has behaved like an animal, you know put them all in there and treat them like animals, but what does that mean for their psyche and who they become and then who is released back into the general population.
“We are doing ourselves a disservice by not ensuring that when people enter that particular system that they are rehabilitated, that they gain a skill and that they are able to become decent members of society when they return because most of them do return,” Wallace stated.
A school for criminals is the term that Munroe used to define the current state of the correctional facility. He said that the new focus is on correcting behavior and reducing the number of people returning to prison, which currently stands at 12-14 percent.
“They used to be carried to prison in a school bus, a big, yellow school bus. We used to call it the free ride at five, you were purveyed to prison in a school bus and at that point, the prison was in fact, a school for criminals.
“And I have seen over my career, young people who went in for minor things now being involved in much more serious crimes and involved in gangs, so the first step is to stop the prison from becoming a school,” Munroe said.
The training for inmates is expected to begin early next year and the minister said that they have already begun the classification process to introduce training in skills like mechanical servicing.
Munroe added that the BDOCS team is aiming to prepare people for their eventual release and they are planning on upskilling people for better assimilation once they are released.
“We are moving to be accredited as a correctional institution, the concept of a correctional institution is to correct your behavior […] and so we are moving to improve the conditions, so that you cant have somebody with influence being able to recruit them because he can get them water because he can get them food, things that they should have anyway; that he could keep them safe, they should be safe anyway. These are the tools that were being used to recruit people in our prisons to street gangs we must eliminate those,” Munroe said.
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