New barracks dedicated at Hattieville Prison
On Monday evening officials gathered at Hattieville Prison to formally dedicate the latest addition to the chronically overcrowded facility. News Five’s Patrick Jones discovered that it wasn’t only the prisoners who are short of space.
While Prison authorities have been working steadily to improve living conditions for close to nine hundred inmates at Hattieville, today the effort shifted — with the dedication of a spanking new barracks — for the prison’s guards. According to Superintendent Bernard Adolphus, the eight bedroom building, equipped with bathroom and dining area, will ease overcrowding at government’s rented apartment house in the village and make life less stressful for employees — particularly those from the districts.
Bernard Adolphus, Superintendent Of Prisons
“We have too many officers located at that junction, the Lisby building. So as the General said, we all agreed, the management team agreed and we plunged into this project here.”
The impact of the plunge was softened by the generosity of a number of people. Counted at the head of the list is the Holy Redeemer Credit Union in Belize City. Sonny Meighan represented H.R.C.U. at the dedication of the Eagle’s nest, named after Henry Charles Usher, a well known pioneer in Belize’s credit union movement.
Sonny Meighan – Assistant Manager, H.R.C.U.
“Very appropriate, very appropriate. Mr. Usher who I have known all my life, has been, he has been a model for me. I’ve looked up to them and try my very best to be like him and he would have really been honored to have a place like this named after him because he is always concerned about the youths and their, he encouraged them to be good citizens.”
The credit union was the first of many private sector interests to partner with the prisons department in their rehabilitation program. H.R.C.U. not only donated a two storey wooden building, but wrote the department a cheque to pay for laying down the foundation. But with so much idle labor just hanging around, it was time to get creative.
Sonny Meighan
“The building next to us on Hyde?s Lane was going to be taken down to make our parking lot a little bigger and just about that time, Mr. Arthurs and Mr. Usher, Francis, our manager got together and they worked out, if you take down the building, you can have it, because we had contacted a contractor and they wanted too much money to do that job and so Mr. Usher and the management decided to donate it.”
Brig. Gen. Earl Arthurs, Liaison Officer
“We decided that we’ll use the wooden side of the building to do other projects and then we would take the money we got for the foundation and make cement blocks out of them, because we have a block making machine and so we just went through it, and then I met a few more people, I spoke to them, and I told them what I was doing brought them out here showed them the building and they donated the materials.”
Adolphus puts the cost of the building at around seventy five thousand dollars. But with the use of prison labor to get the job done, the actual cost of construction is closer to fifty thousand. Still, the department will continue to shell out twelve hundred dollars a month in rent, for the Lisby apartment building.
Bernard Adolphus
“I cannot disregard that building out there because we have a number of officers and at least thirty odd officers will be relocated here. So far we have about fifty officers being located together in one building. So we’re hoping that we’ll have thirty here and the rest, the twenty can stay out there, so we still have to use it until such time.”
Brig. Gen. Earl Arthurs
“It has helped already because the inmates behind me who started this program, this project, they all benefited from coming out here, working unsupervised for long hours and completing the project. Now that tells them already that they can go outside and hold a job and work 8-4.”
For the prison officers who will live here, work will now be just a two minute walk away from home. And plans are already in the making for the installation of recreational facilities.
Brig. Gen. Earl Arthurs
“And so these guys will have a real nest to come back to.”
Patrick Jones, for News Five.
While the prison population is still kept under extremely crowded conditions, the situation has been slightly eased by the moving of 125 young offenders to the Youth Enhancement Academy in Ladyville and 49 prisoners to a work site in Yalbac.
