A Lay Pastor was
yesterday handed over to the police a few hours after he was
caught trying to smuggle marijuana and cell phones into the
Georgetown Prison.
The pastor, who
teaches inmates at the penal institution, was detained by
prison officials with five packets of marijuana, three
cellular phones and a quantity of cash.
The incident occurred
at about 21:45 hours.
According to reports
reaching this newspaper, acting on information, prison
officials carried out a search on the pastor as he was about
to enter the facility to conduct music classes with the
inmates.
A source at the
Georgetown Prison informed this newspaper that the marijuana
was found stashed in the pastor’s shoes, while the cash and
cell phones were found in his crotch and other parts of his
body.
The source said that,
when questioned, the pastor told prison officials that he was
taking in the items to inmates, but he did not identify the
persons.
The source said that
prison officials had suspected the pastor of smuggling in
items into the prison, hence the search of his person.
“We were acting on
information we received that he was smuggling in items,” the
source said.
The recent bust gives
credit to the theory that most of the illegal articles found
in the prison are taken in by staff members and other trusted
individuals.
This view was
expressed by two retired Correctional Officers from the United
States of America who had conducted a training programme for
prison officers on ethical dilemmas late last year.
Yesterday’s bust
came at a time when prison officials are increasingly
unearthing contraband within the prison.
In some cases, these
items are smuggled in by the prisoners themselves, while the
authorities have caught staff members trying to take in drugs
in some of the most ingenuous ways.
Carlyle Holder is the
President and Chief Executive Officer of the Florida-based
Correctional Management and Communications Group. He has 27
years’ experience in the United States correctional
facility, including a top post at the country’s largest
federal prison before his retirement in January this year.
In an exclusive
interview with this newspaper last year, he had explained that
while he was impressed with the staff of the local prison,
there is a need for improving the system and transforming it
into a more progressive operation.
He said that, first
of all, prison officers must be aware of the ethics’
problem, so that they will be better able to deal with it.
“What it really
boils down to is doing the right thing,” he added.
There are reports
that a local prisoner could get almost anything illegal within
the facility.
These illegal items
are either smuggled in through the gate, although the
administration has installed an x-ray scanner, or are thrown
over the prison walls, such as in the case of a firearm
recently.
The latter has
prompted the administration to reinforce the guards around the
main prison in Georgetown, to deter this kind of activity.
Several officers were
caught trying to smuggle marijuana into the prison.
Holder pointed out
that although some prison officers are guilty of facilitating
the entry of contraband goods into the prison, this is just a
small percentage of the staff.
“What happens is
the good people look the other way, and what we have to get
them to do is not look the other way, but report them. Let’s
get rid of the few bad apples that make the agency appear to
be corrupted with a lot of dirty staff.
“This training will
probably remove some of that wall of silence, so that people
will realize that if they look the other way, they are just as
guilty as the person that’s doing it,” he said.
He described
contraband items as things that should not be in the prison,
including drugs and cell phones.
“Contraband can be
anything that is unauthorized. In our business, if you give an
inmate a stick of gum and it is not authorized, it’s the
beginning of something. Although it’s small and may have no
significance in what we do, once you give him that one illegal
piece, it could move from there to a candy, then to drugs and
then a cell phone,” the prison expert explained.
Unlike in the United
States of America, prisoners in Guyana get more opportunity to
interact with the public whenever they are on outdoor duties.
The prison expert
agreed that this increases the opportunities for them to
smuggle prohibited items into the facility.
However, according to
the Deputy Director of Prisons, Pushanand Tahal, while the
Georgetown Prison is equipped with a scanner, it can only
detect illegal objects in a bag.
He said that the
culprits are now moving in stuff by body cavities (strapping
items to the body), which would render the scanner useless,
since it is not designed for that purpose.
“A lot of people
would what we call ‘pouch’ things, like cigarettes and
drugs, on their persons. There is a large percentage of
pouching,” Tahal said.
He explained that
some warders come from the same society as some of the
inmates, and this leads some to sometimes compromise their
professionalism.
He pointed out that,
in some cases, inmates would threaten warders to force them to
do their bidding.
“Out of fear, some
of the wardens would be coerced into smuggling illegal items,
especially for high-profile prisoners,” the acting Director
told this newspaper.
Only recently, a
warder was transferred to another location after he informed
the prison authorities about threats made to him by a
prisoner.
Tahal agreed with the
US experts that the prevalence of cellular phones in the
prisons is a growing cause for concern.
“These prisoners
study the yard, and with things like cell phones, they know
when their accomplices can throw something over the wall or
when a facilitating officer is on duty to receive the illegal
items from a person on the outside,” Tahal contended.
“Cell phones are
perhaps the most prevalent issue facing us as a profession,
because it intimidates witnesses,” the US expert had stated,
pointing out that so worrying is the scenario that the issue
made the front page of leading US dailies.
The threat of illegal
weapons entering the prison is also very much alive.
In 2002, prisoners
who were armed with guns killed a warder and severely wounded
another in one of Guyana’s most daring and violent
jailbreaks.
Sunday, February 08, 2009