The report, released in part to the public yesterday, was based on a review conducted by a team headed by Lloyd Nickram, Management Specialist within the Public Service Ministry, who handed over the report to the Ministry of Home Affairs. The report also addresses the issue of capability within the service and has pointed to the need for employment review policies to allow for only qualified persons to be hired and high performers to be promoted. ”If we don’t employ people with the capacity to accommodate training and development we are not going to get anyplace, the strength or the weakness in any organization of efficiency and effectiveness starts at your recruitment level,” Nickram stated. He said the new strategy is to be serious with recruitment and employ qualified people so that all efforts at training and development will be accommodated.
According to him, the employment policies and procedures must be returned to the subject Ministry, and these should be presided over by a special panel under the Home Affairs Ministry.
He said too there is need to carefully monitor employment and promotion in the prison service “at this time,” noting that a time will come when the prison service will be able to take back that authority.
Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee and Director of Prison Services Dale Erskine were among a select group from various sectors who sat down to examine the interim report yesterday during a one-day session, and to make recommendations towards strengthening it. The Minister referred to the report as a work-in-progress and a crucial step towards enhancing the service. The team was asked to review the prison service management systems and make recommendations based on an in-depth analysis, according to Nickram, and he reported yesterday that the troubling areas were narrowed down to a few things including the growing incidence of relapses among prisoners and the rapid growth of the prison population.
In conducting the review, he said, the team felt the need to determine for what purpose the prison service was established in the country, adding, “If the prison system is abolished, what important service society will miss?” He said the idea is not to imprison, but also rehabilitate, particularly first offenders, so that anyone who leaves the system “can re-enter a civilised society.” Nickram said prisoners should be allowed to leave the system rehabilitated in such a way that they could enter the job market at a competitive level.
The report found that skills which are offered in prison are basic and in need of an upgrade. Nickram said the current trade programmes in the system are beneficial, but pointed out that the programmes need to be structured so that prisoners can receive certification from external agencies. The objective, he said, is to build self-esteem and allow prisoners to live a self-supporting life. Nickram called on the private sector to support the prison service in acquiring modern equipment saying that government cannot do it alone. He said crime affects the country with the private sector being heavily targeted.
Further, he said that some consideration should be paid to the number of CSEC subjects being offered within prison, which currently sets it at five. He added that the job market has become intensely competitive with students leaving schools with ten subjects and more.
Nickram also called for serious attention to be paid to what he described as existing “cliques” within the prison service. He said that people within the system are not sure what they are employed to do so they connect to an authority source, noting that communication mechanisms are severely disrupted because of this. He opined that steps need to be taken as early as possible in relation to this situation.
After the report was presented the session was opened briefly for questions from the floor and among some of the observations was one that the team failed to include the treatment of prisoners within the system, particularly as it relates to human rights abuses. To this, Nickram replied that the entire report was not released and the session was intended to strengthen the report by adding to it.
