Prison not only option

Alternative sentencing remains a priority for Minister of Home Affairs, Edmund Hinkson, who explained that the cost of providing for just one inmate at the prison is more than $30 000 annually.

Minister Hinkson noted that the matter is currently with his Ministry to eventually be sent to Cabinet for approval. He made the comments recently during a ceremony and parade held on the ground of Her Majesty’s Prison Dodds, to honour Assistant Superintendent of Prisons, Cedrick Moore, who retired after 46 years of service.

“I think that the people of Barbados understand that it is not feasible or practical to continue to pay 30, 32 thousand dollars per year to house someone at Dodds in some cases waiting for a trial... [That] is just to house them, that does not include when they are sick, to go to a polyclinic, or the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, or when they have psychological issues to go to the Psychiatric Hospital or when they may be in a drug reform programme. Of course that costs money too. All of these are issues that we as a country have to look at to decide whether we can continue to afford it,” Hinkson stated.

As such, he maintained that alternative sentencing had to be considered. He made the point while questioning if as a country we were getting the best out of our resources, financial and human, in continuing to sentence individuals to prison for minor offences, when there are viable alternatives to explore.

“This prison is built for a capacity of about 1200 persons, these days the prison’s population varies between 760 to 800 – just over 800 at any given time – about 20, 25 of those are female. So a predominance of men as we know and young men, who we wish would not have found themselves in that position before the law courts in the first place and we of course have to put all hands on deck, all the resources of Barbados to seek to prevent that, to guide our young people from early,” he told those gathered.

Speaking to an audience that included members of the judiciary and the Royal Barbados Police Force and the Probation Department, the Home Affairs Minister indicating that ankle monitoring is one of the options to be considered, noted that by sending young men to prison they were meeting up with “hardened” prisoners and becoming “further entrenched in their criminal behaviour”. Instead, he said where offences are minor they could look for to offer them opportunities to reform outside of prison.