Attorney General tours Hattieville Prison

Like so many other things scheduled for the week of October twenty-third, the tour by Attorney General Richard Bradley to inspect the Hattieville Prison was also put on hold until today. News Five was on hand for the inspection.

Attorney General Richard Bradley’s tour did not only include an inspection of the facilities at Hattieville Prison, but both staff and inmates were briefed on a number of new programs that will be instituted to improve prison conditions. One problem the Attorney General spoke about at length, is that of overcrowding. Today there are over a thousand inmates at the facility, with as much as eight men to one tiny cell.

Richard Bradley, Attorney General

“These men and women will no longer be sitting in their cells all day, all week. There is going to be more programs whether it be in carpentry, masonry. We are going to put in a proper library. We will in fact have teams who are very low risks where escape is concern. Those teams will come back into the community and give something for the wreck they may have caused to families and to the wider society, so that they may contribute to cleaning Belize City, for example and basically to reintroduce these men to a program of rehabilitation and work which is something that has been lacking for a long time.

We will by little by little increase the size of the prison buildings so that we can in a physical way, tackle the overcrowding which has been something that has plagued the prison and which threatens from time to time to erupt into outright riot with strong healthy men overcrowded in cells.”

But overcrowding is not the only problem the Attorney General says he and the prison’s management intend to address. Bradley also had some very strong words for those staff members who have been trafficking drugs from inside the prison.

Richard Bradley

“Some warders, the minority of warders are engaged in trafficking drugs through the prison system. That is totally unacceptable; we need to stamp that out.”

In closing, Bradley encouraged both staff and inmates to be responsible and to cooperate with the new programs that will be introduced into the prison system.