SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Prison rapes are down.

That’s ac­cord­ing to act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons William Alexan­der.

Alexan­der made the state­ment while ad­dress­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Hu­man Rights, Equal­i­ty and Di­ver­si­ty chaired by Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly at Tow­er D, Port-of-Spain.

He said one of the keys fac­tors which led to the re­duc­tion in prison rapes was the fact that prison cells were over­crowd­ed.

The com­mit­tee held dis­cus­sions with of­fi­cials of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, As­so­ci­a­tion of Psy­chi­a­trists of T&T (APTT), Vi­sion on Mis­sion (VOM) and Coun­cil of Pris­ons and Chap­lains and Min­is­ters in­to the im­pact of men­tal health and fam­i­ly life of in­mates at the re­mand pris­ons.

The is­sue of the rape in prison was raised by com­mit­tee mem­ber Vidia Gayadeen-Gopeesingh who queried if sodomis­ing a pris­on­er could trig­ger men­tal health dis­or­ders.

In re­sponse, APTT’s psy­chi­a­trist Dr Do­minic Obi­a­ju­lu Nwoko­lo ad­mit­ted that “such as­saults on one’s per­son will al­ways have ad­verse men­tal health con­se­quences.”

Weigh­ing in on the is­sue, Alexan­der de­scribed the rape as a “hor­ri­ble act be­cause you are in­ter­fer­ing with the mas­culin­i­ty or the per­cep­tion of their man­ness.”

Alexan­der said some­times a pris­on­er who is raped may not even come for­ward to talk about it.

“It is some­thing we do not take light­ly. And in many ways, you know they say out of evil cometh good...be­cause of over­crowd­ing...it re­duces it be­cause there are more per­sons in the cell and some­body would speak up. As op­posed to two or three per­sons in a cell it can more eas­i­ly oc­cur. We have found that the (rapes) have de­creased tremen­dous­ly.”

Alexan­der said when he joined the pris­ons ser­vice 30 years ago, some preda­tors had to be in­car­cer­at­ed dif­fer­ent­ly.

“The minute they get mixed in the pop­u­la­tion they would en­gage in that be­hav­iour. So you have to lock them down in a cell by them­selves which re­duces your ca­pac­i­ty to house the pop­u­la­tion.”

Alexan­der said for a pris­on­er “to be la­belled a rapist in the prison will have cer­tain con­se­quences for you. Pris­on­ers frown on two per­sons in jail — child mo­les­ters and rapists. When they come in­to the prison we have to house them sep­a­rate­ly. Some­body would rob, chop and shoot you, but they will hate you for rap­ing an­oth­er in­di­vid­ual.”

It was al­so re­vealed that while 25 per cent of the coun­try’s re­mand pris­on­ers had men­tal health is­sues, prison su­per­vi­sor John Lopez said on­ly four per cent have been seek­ing psy­chi­atric treat­ment.

Nwoko­lo said while no lo­cal study had been un­der­tak­en to de­ter­mine what per­cent­age of T&T’s re­mand pris­on­ers suf­fer from men­tal health “if they go by in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards one could safe­ly say about 25 to 30 per cent of re­man­dees does have men­tal health is­sues.”

He said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 per cent of the coun­try’s re­mand pris­on­ers suf­fers from men­tal health prob­lems.

Of the 1,065 re­mand pris­on­ers who are await­ing tri­al ap­prox­i­mate­ly 266 ei­ther come in or de­vel­op men­tal ill­ness.

In some cas­es, these pris­on­ers await be­tween five to ten years for a tri­al.

Pris­on­ers who en­counter men­tal ill­ness ex­hib­it de­pres­sion, fre­quent out­bursts, ag­gres­sion, ag­i­ta­tion and be­come vi­o­lent, Nwoko­lo said.