Two out of every three peo­ple in the na­tion’s pris­ons are in the re­mand sec­tions, Pres­i­dent of the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion Ceron Richards has said.

He was speak­ing dur­ing a di­a­logue ses­sion host­ed by the Caribbean Cen­tre for Hu­man Rights in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Di­a­logue So­lu­tions. Richards dis­closed that as of Sun­day there are 2,328 in­mates await­ing jus­tice in the re­mand sec­tions of the na­tion’s pris­ons, which he said rep­re­sents two-thirds of the 3,743 peo­ple com­mit­ted to the pris­ons.

“There are 1,415 con­vict­ed in­mates which is just one third con­vict­ed so there­in lies our cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. There is no pur­pose-built re­mand yard fa­cil­i­ty built and de­sign pur­pose­ly to house in­mates in so they are left in very in­hu­mane and un­in­hab­it­able over­crowd­ing con­di­tions so cramped that it is list­ed in­hu­mane and not amount to prop­er treat­ment,” Richards said.

He added that frus­tra­tion lev­els are not just high among in­mates but among of­fi­cers too.

“It is very nor­mal to see per­sons spend­ing ex­cess of ten and 17 years in re­mand be­cause the road to jus­tice is not swift,” Richards stat­ed.

He said over the years the as­so­ci­a­tion has made sev­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions to al­ter­na­tive term im­pris­on­ment which in­cludes build­ing a new re­mand fa­cil­i­ty, pa­role sys­tem and elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing.

Guest speak­er Baz Dreisinger, founder Pris­ons-to-Col­lege Pipeline and Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor In­car­cer­a­tion Na­tions Net­work said fund­ing is crit­i­cal for ac­tion.

“The folks from the IDB were say­ing they are open to ideas and open to sup­port­ing them and fund­ing them so the key is how do we get that fund­ing not for yet one more study but rather for ac­tion for com­mu­ni­ty courts, for al­ter­na­tive in­car­cer­a­tion pro­grams, for rad­i­cal vi­o­lence pre­ven­tion pro­grams.

We need to broad­en this con­ver­sa­tion and bring this in­to the gen­er­al pub­lic. Pris­ons were ei­ther to the bot­tom of the bud­get or sec­ond to bot­tom of the bud­get of all the gov­ern­ment spend­ing and the weight of that shifts when here is pub­lic pres­sure and I have been part of that shift in the Unit­ed States. I have watched and been part of the move­ment in 20 years in the US but when the cul­ture start­ed shift­ing and dis­course start­ed shift­ing when there were doc­u­men­taries made and books that came out to make peo­ple aware and shift the cul­ture and shift the con­ver­sa­tions and the voic­es of those di­rect­ly im­pact­ed at the fore­front the pub­lic starts to care.”

“When the pub­lic de­mands it, pol­i­cy has to re­spond,” she added.