Foreign prisoners deported to ease prison crowding
Problems at the prison have been at the forefront of this newscast for more nights than we care to count…and tonight is no exception. The only difference is that in this instance officials are taking actions which they hope will prevent problems in the future.
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
Two years ago there were just over a thousand inmates crammed into an institution that was built to hold five hundred prisoners. The overcrowding has created a number of problems that have stemmed from unsanitary conditions to murder. Today, the Department of Corrections has embarked on a programme that has reduced the number of inmates at the prison to eight hundred. As a result of negotiations between governments, a large number of inmates are being deported to their homes in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia and Nigeria.
Dickie Bradley, Minister Responsible for Prisons
“This year I was reading the Amnesty International Report on Belize about the police, the death sentences, about the prisons and I discussed the matter with the Prime Minister and we have decided that this will be the last year we are going to have the prisons mentioned in any human rights report, that the conditions there are overcrowded and unsanitary and inhumane. We’re going to put a stop to that.”
The inmates who are being deported are those persons who have committed lesser offenses that include immigration violations, burglary and drug possession. Dickie Bradley, Minister Responsible for Prisons says the inmates are escorted back to their homeland by officials of the respective countries.
Dickie Bradley
“They will accompany them. When I was up there the last time, they were involved in preparing documentation on them for their own records, taking photographs of each of the inmates that were to be released, preparing all the documents, clearing all the way in their country. It was just a matter of putting them on the bus and getting them to the border points. In fact I think that Guatemala has offered to allow the inmates from the other countries to pass through Guatemala, so that they can be speedily returned to their countries as well. It’s a big help for us, it makes a big difference.”
Once the prisoners are deported, it is up to their country to decide whether they will be imprisoned or set free. Bradley says the only aliens who will remain behind bars in Belize are those who have committed serious crimes like murder, rape and other violent offenses. The minister said there are other measures being taken to reduce the overall problem of overcrowding.
Dickie Bradley
“We have constructed two other buildings up at the compound. The so called Tango Four and now there is a Tango Five and each of these buildings can take up to at least a hundred inmates comfortably. So we have been relocating out of the overcrowded cells, this is only among the buildings where less violent prisoners are kept. Behind medium and maximum, it’s a different story. You still have overcrowding there because you cannot be taking violent prisoners from out of the max section and have them in the regular buildings.”
Bradley says the construction of a new maximum-security building is underway and once it is completed there should no longer be a problem of overcrowding at the Hattieville Prison.
The deportation began on Monday and will continue into the near future.
