By Isaac Massaquoi
There’s no doubt anymore that the Pademba Road jail will be relocated to somewhere beyond Waterloo in the Western Area rural district. The details of the relocation such as a definite spot and a few other issues are still not in the public domain although newspapers have carried pictures and stories of the deputy minister of internal affairs, Sheka Tarawallie, visiting the Pademba Road prison with an official of the company that will probably construct the news prison, andinspecting some possible sites.
The government appears to be responding to public calls for the relocation of the prison mainly because of the security concerns around the jail. Every time a so-called high value prisoner is locked up there, the authorities will throw a ring of steel around Pademba Road. A joint police and military checkpoint manned by heavily-armed personnel will be deployed and traffic will be seriously disrupted in that part of the city which is a major arterial road for west-bound traffic in the evenings.
Besides when prisoners launch one of those daring escapes, (and we’ve had two in recent times) the gunfire and general security operation that follows is usually too much for people in the immediate vicinity. I should add that there are many other people who hate being constantly reminded about the misery behind those walls on their way to and from work every day.
But the physical relocation of the cells and administrative quarters of the Pademba road jail is not the issue here now. I am concerned that what this relocation will do is merely further hide some very uncomfortable truths about our criminal justice system in the dark recesses of our collective consciences while we continue putting up this façade saying Sierra Leone’s human rights record is perfect.
In July 2005, Louise Arbour, the then UN Commissioner for Human Rights visited Sierra Leone and examined the human rights situation and the criminal justice system. At a news conference held at the UN headquarters in Freetown following that visit, the Canadian Jurist acknowledged the post-war challenges facing Sierra Leone in the criminal justice area.
But she was particularly concerned that Sierra Leone had a very unique situation with more people on remand than those tried and convicted.
I don’t have the figures as I write but I am willing to bet my last penny that if anything, the situation is worse today than at the time of Arbour’s visit.
We lock up too many people in this country and even at this point I can’t understand why the judiciary keep people in custody for particular kinds of offences when people in other countries are using alternative sentences just to avoid congestion in jails. They use community service and other measures.
Recently, a group of traders were jailed for a month for displaying their wares in prohibited places. Judicial authorities have always told the nation about the discretionary powers of magistrates regarding bail in particular, and I take no issues with the fact that the traders were lawfully convicted. But how can actually locking them up for such minor offences be justified in the face of the present reality at the Pademba road jail in terms of overcrowding and other livelihood issues like food, water and sanitation and recreation.
Also recently, a magistrate ordered that a female singer charged with defamation be kept on remand for about a week only for another magistrate to release the woman on bail. The Attorney General himself said on radio that it didn’t seem right that the woman be remanded for that kind of offence. How many of such people do we have then in jail at Pademba Road? I mean those who found themselves in the same situation but weren’t famous enough to move the judiciary in the way it was in the case of the artist.
So overcrowding is a massive problem which, like the prison itself could be shoved into some corner of the country where even human rights groups who have opened up the doors to the Pademba Road jail by means of their reports will find it difficult to visit in these days of scare donor funds and shifting priorities.
I have to also say that our prison system has been reduced to a place for punishment and that is wrong.
When a country’s whole criminal justice system is about punishing people who offend the law rather than reforming them and giving them another chance in life, there will be high rates of recidivism and society will be unable to contain the consequences.
The prisons department used to be very productive in this country. In the days when their budget was reasonably good, prisoners were trained in trades to help return them to society with little pain and possibility of them re-offending.
The department always won the Daily Mail trade fair where all businesses and agencies exhibited products that attracted local and international audiences for their craftsmanship and industry. A good percentage of that work was done by prisoners.
The department had a bakery, a tailoring facility and others from which prisoners benefited. As a boy growing up close to the prison barracks, I knew people who came out of jail as trained artisans who have lived a good life since and are now contributing to society. That is all dead today.
All that happens now is people are locked for years and years sometimes without trial and released into society to begin the next cycle of offending, getting arrested by the police, making court appearances and returning to jail. Let the judiciary publish the figures for repeat offenders now. That will help us understand how our neglect of the prison service has created a colony of criminals who will never be saved.
I am not saying that the police and military are doing well in terms of their working conditions like living quarters and equipment. What I am saying is that, compared to those in the prison service, they are in heaven. The living quarters of prison officers and their families are inadequate and bad, salaries are extremely low, uniforms worn-out and the only vehicles I see are the ones they use to convey accused persons to and from the courts. In short the condition of prison officers from the outside, tells adequately of the condition of the people behind their walls.
I mean no disrespect to prison officers but I feel compelled to raise these issues so that the nation doesn’t get swept up in the euphoria of the prison being relocated outside Freetown to the extent that we forget to ask the tough questions regarding what happens next besides erecting a shopping mall on the present location of the prison.
There is no alternative to the government putting significant investment into the prison service to significantly improve the welfare of the prison officers and make the place a real correctional institution with the guiding philosophy being to punish and ultimately reform those incarcerated before they return to society.
It may appear trivial but I fear that once the jail yard moves away from Freetown, family visits will be few and far between, human rights groups will also not be as frequent in the place as they are now. Attention will generally shift from the prison. That does not in any mean I am against the relocation of the prison. I am saying that we now have to seriously think about rebuilding the prison service in line with others in advanced democracies.
The police in Sierra Leone do not publish monthly or quarterly crime figures so it’s difficult to be exact about this, but the number of crime now being committed by particularly young people is on the increase.
Whether we like it or not we have a generation of adolescents who have a violent past having actively participated in the civil war and some teenagers who feel they can copy and try out anything they see in movies including forming gangs in schools and communities and attacking each other with knives and machetes at the slightest provocation. These are the people who are likely to be inmates of the new prison. They will be both new offenders and criminals transferred over from the Pademba road jail.
So while we wait to shop in the proposed shopping mall to be built on the site of the Pademba road jail, we must never forget to constantly remind the people in power that it is their job to reform and train offenders locked up in the new prison before they are released into society. Those who take care of such social misfits also deserve to be treated fairly.
(C) Politico 23/05/13
