Crucial Enquiry

THE DECISION to establish a Commission of Enquiry into the shocking episode of brutal beatings at the St. Catherine District Prison last week is appropriate. It will be useful to get all the facts not just about the violence which transpired but also about the contributing factors.

The decision was disclosed in Parliament during debate on a motion for adjournment of Wednesday's sitting. Which suggests that all the preliminary arrangements were not yet in place for a formal announcement. The terms of reference, were released only late yesterday.

The enquiry will most likely look at the long-drawn-out dispute about the cadre of warders needed to man a prison system which is now a disaster zone. It is patent that soldiers by training and temperament should not be deployed for the extended period that they have been.

The recruiting exercise to replace those warders who have been discredited will take some time. In the interim it is clear that what has been bad has gotten worse.

The enquiry will have to determine how it came to pass that a wide variety of makeshift weaponry, cellular phones, cooking implements, and even a power saw could have been smuggled into the cells of the Spanish Town facility. The veritable flood of consumer hardware could hardly have gotten in without connivance from the guardians of the prisoners.

The enquiry must therefore take a serious look at all levels of management of the prison system, as well as the impact of trade union activity on a work force which over time must have been infected by the stench of a depraved environment.

There has to be concern also about the weight of evidence a Commission of Enquiry will get from both sides of a crucial divide: convicts as victims on the one hand, and their guards as protagonists, on the other.

A definitive verdict on the state of crime and punishment in Jamaica may well fall within the ambit of a serious enquiry.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner.

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