Prison superintendents conference ends in Belize City
After three days of brainstorming, prison superintendents of British dependent territories in the Caribbean have ended their annual support conference in Belize City. While for some it was a time to re-acquaint themselves with fellow superintendents, others took the opportunity to gather fresh ideas on tackling problems in their own prison system.
Eric Smith, Director of Prisons, Cayman Islands
“Taking back with me, I can be assured that Mr. Adolphus, the superintendent from here did get some insight from us as to what we could do to assist him in training, in discussion about his prison. I am certain that I feel pretty good and well good about this conference here.
Well we know that all governments are keen on their prison and sometimes we are not in the top branch of where we want to be but I have to congratulate the staff and members of the prison for a job they are doing well done under the circumstances and it’s the same for me and all the others in our country. It’s not a bed of rose garden at all; it’s prison, prison like everywhere else.”
Ashford Frett, Prison Superintendent, B.V.I.
“The prisoners that they have, they are still humans who would have to come back to the society and while there is a lot of good intentions to do more to help them, they are constrained by limited resources and so forth. Whereas in our case we have a different setting where we focus a lot more on rehabilitation and reaching out to help those persons who for one reason are unfortunate to find themselves in prison, and we focus a lot of energy into rehabilitation and training. So that is one of the things that we look at to be a bit different and as we look around the youth program that they have here, that is being focussed in the right direction and I trust the officers would get the support that would be necessary to develop that concept that they have approached there.”
The visiting Superintendents of Prisons were hosted by the Department of Corrections and were taken on field trips to the Hattieville Prison and the Youth Enhancement Academy in Ladyville.
