Systems in place to protect prisoners from sexual assault – Prison Director

Amidst reports coming out of persons being sexually assaulted in prisons, Director of Prisons, Gladwin Samuels has said such actions are not condoned and provisions are in place to protect persons from sexual assault in prison.
Samuels made it clear at a recent public discussion on sexual misconduct in the workplace that, “we do have mechanisms in place to allow persons who may be exposed to any form of harassment to make those complaints outside of persons associated with the (Guyana) Prison Service.”
He explained that there are designated social workers attached to the various penal institutions which allow prisoners to interact with those social workers on a one-on-one basis. “We also have a number of Boards established with prominent members of society who visit those prisons and they also interact with those prisoners one-on-one or by groups and many of those Boards are empowered to report directly to the Minister, any findings, based on their visit to the prison.”
While describing prison as a “caring environment”, the Prisons Director noted that he is aware that on many occasions if someone is sent to prison, especially for sexually abusing a child, they are vulnerable to being sexually and possibly physically abused by inmates, so to avoid these mishaps provisions are made.
Despite cramped prisons, Samuels said, “…from the onset, we put systems in place to provide segregation to ensure that they are not exposed to any unwanted risk, because yes, the environment is one in which they can be sexually assaulted and they can also be physically assaulted because a number of people in prison they think about the children on the road and many of them are also against some of the acts.”
Cognisant of the fact that the Guyana Prison Service is responsible for the safe custody of all prisoners, he noted, “Those considerations are taken to ensure outside of what they are sent to prison for, they are not exposed to any additional mishaps”.
The Prisons Director alluded to the fact that he is aware of two reported cases of persons being sexually assaulted in prison over the last 10 years and highlighted that there is a 99.9 per cent probability that that would have been a same sex situation since the laws provide for females to supervise female prisoners and men to supervise men. He further informed that one of those cases is presently before the High Court.