Friday afternoon’s escape of nine inmates from the Mazaruni penal facility and the shooting of four members of the joint services is just another manifestation of the precarious state of the nation’s security.
For all the utterances to the contrary and the pretence that the police, the army, the prison service and the fire service are acquitting themselves credibly events always conspire to expose the lie. And so it was on Friday that the nine men, some of them clearly dangerous and capable of doing real damage, overwhelmed the security guards and fled the facility. The type of weapons they used and why these weren’t detected before would be the immediate causes for concern and have to be properly investigated.
It is deeply troubling that the joint services response was mounted in such a way that the left didn’t know what the right was doing and this resulted in a bumbling confrontation in which four servicemen were injured in a friendly fire shoot-out. One would have thought that given the extensive joint services operations in the past that clear protocols would have been worked out in cases like these and adequate communications channels between the various forces would have been secured. Who fired first and why this incident occurred in the first place must also be properly investigated.
Next month the country is hosting the Rio summit which a number of foreign leaders are expected to attend. The month after that the super eight matches in the cricket world cup are to be played here at the Providence stadium. To have a prison escape of this scale at the second most important penal facility where a number of dangerous prisoners are held is alarming and should prompt an emergency meeting of all the security oversight bodies.
The truth is that whether or not we have a trouble-free period probably has less to do with the flexing of the muscles of the security forces than with the planning and scheming of criminals whether they are in jails, on the streets, sequestered in friendly communities or hanging out at the neighbourhood bars. Rudderless is the ship of security as witnessed by the sieve-like nature of the prisons, the disappeared army’s AK-47s, the inability of the police force to conduct competent investigations and successfully prosecute criminals and the dismal response of the fire service to conflagrations and its complete lack of answers to the string of unsettling fires that erupted around the elections. As to security on the roads, the twin mayhem of speed and alcohol/drug-influenced driving continue to wreak havoc and claim lives. And if you are a fisherman, beware the pirates.
As far as the security of the prisons is concerned, there has been no evident attempt to establish accountability to make certain that there is no repeat of a jail-break like the one in Georgetown in February 2002. The same person who was in charge of the prison in 2002 is still at the helm of the prison service despite the serious questions which had been raised about his performance then and the continued breaches of security at penal facilities including an uprising at the Camp Street prison last year. No one apparently has had to be held accountable in the security services for the major breaches under their watch.
Just over a year ago Mazaruni had been the scene of a similar break-out, though mercifully the escapees were recaptured in short order and they appeared not to have a clue about the terrain. In this case there seems to have been clearer planning and several of the escapees have knowledge of the region.
What has been done since the November 2005 break-out and why was it ineffectual in preventing Friday’s escape? This is what should immediately engage the attention of the Minister of Home Affairs and the Defence Board.
A break-out by armed men can no longer be treated the way in which it might have been prior to February 23, 2002. That date marked the end of taking these things lightly. It should warrant a full scale investigation and an immediate revisiting of the general findings of the Willems report on the `Lunkie’ ladder-assisted climb over the wall of the Camp Street jail, (ironically, the police on Friday issued another wanted bulletin for `Lunkie’) and the Kennard report on the 2002 calamity.
Both of these reports contained piercing analyses of the failings of the prison system. It would be a useful exercise for the Ministry of Home Affairs to glean how much of what should be implemented actually has been.
