Medical volunteer witness to Jamaica's violent prisons

Mennonite Central Committee
Friday, 3 November 2000

Roger Neill remembers the screams of an inmate being stabbed to death in the prison where he works. While soldiers looked on passively, the young man staggered out of the cell block and collapsed by the chain-link fence across from Neill, a Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) volunteer.

The October murder was one of many tragedies in the recent breakdown of Jamaica's prison system, following a labor dispute that resulted in the suspension of nearly all experienced security staff. As a member of the state-sponsored prison medical team, Neill has been on the front lines -- and the front pages -- in the struggle to raise public awareness of the deteriorating situation.

An experienced psychiatric social worker, Neill began working with the Jamaica Department of Correctional Services nearly two years ago to increase services for mentally ill prisoners. The seven-member team, the rest of whom are Jamaican, serves more than 4,000 inmates in several facilities.

Despite severe understaffing and inadequate equipment, during 1999 the team was seeing progress. They developed staff education, increased psychiatric screening and even began a peer counseling program, the first of its kind in the region.

But in October 1999 the largest prison break in Jamaica's history coincided with contractual disputes between security and support staff, or warders as they are called here, and corrections department administrators. The warders' union planned a "sick out" to protest their being blamed for the escape.

In retaliation, the administrators suspended more than 800 warders, placing them on "temporary" leave with one-quarter pay. Soldiers were sent in to take the warders' place until the labor dispute is settled.

In an analysis he wrote for a human rights lawyer investigating the situation, Neill described the result of these events as "a catastrophic reduction in experienced staff."

Soldiers are untrained and uninterested in prison work, and they replaced the warders only on a one to two basis.

What has ensued, Neill said, is "a bloodbath." Even before the warders' suspensions, the prisons were in bad enough shape for a 1995 Amnesty International report to prescribe "drastic fundamental changes to ensure even elemental human rights." Now, the fragile system in which warders protected at least some of the weaker inmates has given way to chaos in which the drug lords and gang leaders terrorize the weak, the mentally ill and those who cooperate with authorities.

Twenty inmates have been murdered by other inmates in 10 months, with another 30 to 35 seriously injured. At St. Catherine District Adult Correctional Centre, also known as District Prison, soldiers and the remaining warders attempted to regain control in a frenzy of beatings that injured 350 to 400 men.

The inmate whose murder Neill witnessed, Bernard Chang, had been valedictorian of the peer counseling training course. A cheerful young man who had become a Christian while in prison, Chang had served as a main hospital orderly in the absence of trained staff.

At the risk of their own lives in the prisons, Neill and others are leading the struggle to return the warders to their positions and draw attention to the human rights abuses they witness daily.

The day after the Chang murder, the medical team decided to bring the incident to the public through a local radio talk show. When the prison commissioner phoned in, they called him to accountability.

"These talk shows are the real vehicle for democracy here," Neill said. "It brought the incident to the public."

They also issued a press release. "Prison meds restive: Ultimatum issued for warders return," blared the front page headline in the Oct. 8 issue of the Jamaica daily newspaper, The Gleaner.

Ron Good, MCC Jamaica country co-representative, noted that Neill, as a foreigner, is in a safer position than his Jamaican colleagues to criticize government policies. They have received threats, and the human rights lawyer with whom Neill was working fled to England in fear of her life.

"Roger has been able to keep this fire of accountability and human rights burning," Good said.

Although he does not know from day to day what he will encounter, or even whether the medical team will be allowed to maintain its presence in the prisons, Neill's enthusiasm for his work continues.

"I have had the privilege of being surrounded by the love of Christ and serving in his name in these very violent institutions," Neill said.

For more information, or to contact Mennonite Central Committee, see their website at: www.mcc.org