(A fortnightly column by the Guyana Bar Association)
Today we continue our discussion on the Bar Association’s concerns about persons in custody which we began in our last column published on February 12. In that column we indicated that we would address the question of persons held as “prisoners”, the singular form of which is defined in the Prisons Act as “any person whether convicted or not under detention in any prison”. The Prisons Act describes a prison as any house, building, enclosure or place declared to be a prison under section 3 of the Act by the Minister responsible for prisons who currently is the Minister of Public Security.
A “lock-up” is defined in the Act to mean any house, building, enclosure or place declared to be a lock-up under the said section 3. In fact, the section gives the Minister the power to declare such a place as a prison or a lock-up and, in the declaration, designate the name by which the prison or lock-up is to be known. The 2012 Edition of the Laws of Guyana includes Orders designating Melanie Damishana, Lusignan and Belbaag as Prisons and Timehri as a Remand Centre. Under the Prisons Ordinance of 1953 there were and continue to be a Convict Prison, known as a Penal Settlement at Mazaruni, Joint Prisons at the Georgetown Gaol and the New Amsterdam Gaol, ordinary prisons at the prisons at Kamakusa in the Mazaruni Diamond Fields, Enachu in the Mazaruni, and places of confinement at Lethem and Mabaruma.
There is no record of any of these places or of any Police Stations being designated as a lock-up although the term is widely used by those associated with Police Stations to refer to the place in the Police Stations where persons are held as suspects pending further investigation or charge. There is some concern in the profession and no doubt in the public that while in any year a large number of persons are detained in these lock-ups, little is known about who is detained in them, for what reasons, the circumstances they
