No media tour now of island prisons

COMMISSIONER OF Corrections Lt. Colonel John Prescod says his staff is too stretched for him to allow a media tour of the prisons at this time.

A tour by the media at this time "is going to take us from what we are doing for a couple of days... maybe next week I will be ready to allow it," he says.

"The staff has been going full steam since Sunday, May 21 and we have to continue to allow visits, food to come in and inmates to take baths and deal with injuries. They are fully stretched and we have about 35 to 40 warders trying to do that job. Soldiers are there, but the soldiers are not trained in the specific skills of dealing with custodial functions," he said.

Shirley Johnson, director of rehabilitation in the Correctional Services, said that despite last week's disturbances at the St. Catherine Correctional Centre, rehabilitation work was continuing.

"The school programme (is) going on... tailoring and block-making are still going on," she said.

The director said prison authorities were trying to get prisoners throughout the system to be involved in rehabilitation programmes and were focusing on getting inmates to deal with their anger, to have reverence for life and to get involved in the education programme.

Of the 4,000 inmates and wards (juveniles) in the prison system, about 95 per cent of the wards were involved in rehabilitation activities, while only 20 to 25 per cent of the adults were involved.

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