Minister of State, Joseph Harmon, announced at Thursday’s post-Cabinet press briefing that almost million would be spent on expanding and rehabilitating the riverine correctional facility of the Mazuruni Prison, located in Region Seven (Cuyuni/Mazaruni), in order to accommodate more long-term prisoners from the Camp Street Prison in Georgetown.
The minister disclosed that Cabinet had given its approval for two contracts to be issued in this regard: one for $28.1million to A. Nazir and Sons Contracting, and another for $30.4 million to R. Kissoon Contracting Services Limited.
The Mazaruni Prison in Region 7
This development comes almost one year after a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) had recommended that more space be provided for inmates at the Georgetown Prison.
The Mazaruni Prison, standing on some 20 acres of land, provides living accommodation for prison officers, blocks for inmates, and land for agricultural development. Rehabilitation of this facility also includes proper fencing of its entire 20-acre spread and expansion of its current facilities.
Minister Harmon explained that the plan has always been to move some of the prisoners from Camp Street to Mazaruni, thus accommodation has to be provided for that purpose. He said Government is trying to provide for prisoners accommodation in keeping with international standards.
“The facilities we provide for Guyanese… although they are in prison, we still have to treat them as proper human beings; and therefore the conditions that we provide for them in these facilities, we are looking to upgrade those,” Harmon said.
Government had immediately established a Commission of Enquiry to determine the root causes of the massive fire that had engulfed the Camp Street Prison in March 2016 and had claimed the lives of 17 inmates.
Several recommendations had been made after completion of that CoI, including relieving the congestion at that correctional facility by providing enough space for inmates; and more timely resolution of legal issues by abolishing preliminary inquiries (PIs) as an urgent priority of the judiciary.
It was also recommended that a robust programme of community-based sentencing alternatives and a piloting of alternative and community-based sentences should be undertaken with women and juvenile offenders.
Moreover, the release of prisoners who are on remand should be automatic once the time they served equals the sentence which the offence would have attracted. Further, maximum limits for the time in which inmates are on remand should be taken into consideration.
It had also been suggested that the large number of prisoners on remand was responsible for overcrowding in the prison system. Figures released by the Guyana Prison Service (GPS) have indicated that 258 prisoners were remanded by magistrates at the end of February 2016.
