?Gail Alexan­der

?Gail Alexan­der

Close to tears, new UNC Sen­a­tor Ver­na St Rose Greaves dur­ing her maid­en con­tri­bu­tion in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day lament­ed T&T's crime rate and the re­cent killing of four mem­bers of a Gon­za­les fam­i­ly.

"When they rolled those four coffins out, it rocked me to my core. So if I cry, I apol­o­gise but I cry for the na­tion as we have ig­nored our re­spon­si­bil­i­ties," Greaves said.

Al­ter­nat­ing be­tween sad and fiery tones in her con­tri­bu­tion on the Prison Amend­ment Bill, Greaves wad­ed in­to Gov­ern­ment re­gard­ing crime and the prison sit­u­a­tion.

She pre­sent­ed sen­a­tors with a graph­ic pic­ture of life be­hind prison walls, par­tic­u­lar­ly where pris­on­ers' toi­let fa­cil­i­ties were con­cerned.

"This bill is a vague, re­ac­tionary stop-gap mea­sure, a plas­ter on a pus-filled sore that is our prison sys­tem...prison is not at the top of our list of pri­or­i­ties and ur­gen­cies," Greaves added.

Ex­press­ing con­cern about dis­ease out­break, Greaves said Car­rera Is­land prison did not have a wa­ter sys­tem and pris­on­ers emp­ty slop buck­ets of raw fae­ces in­to the sea dai­ly through a hole in the prison wall they al­so used as a toi­let.

Not­ing the time, 2.47 pm, Greaves said at that time in the pris­ons, in­mates would be emp­ty­ing slop buck­ets whose con­tents had been left to bub­ble overnight.

Stench apart, she said, one might see young men putting their hands in­to plas­tic salt beef buck­ets to scrape and dis­lodge hard­ened fae­ces.

Re­lat­ing how the sit­u­a­tion pains prison of­fi­cers, Greaves added: "Grown men and women with­out san­i­tary fa­cil­i­ties are forced to defe­cate in the pres­ence of fel­low pris­on­ers with­out pri­va­cy, in­to bot­tles, plas­tic bags and on pa­per to be poured in­to a plas­tic buck­et... and we talk about hu­man rights and ur­gency and restora­tive jus­tice."

Greaves said pris­on­ers of­ten slept with their ears and nos­trils stuffed and would leave bread in cell cor­ners to pre­vent cock­roach­es from crawl­ing in­to their ori­fices while they slept.

Re­lat­ing how in­mates were packed like sar­dines in ham­mocks and on card­board on the ground and with the years-old stench of urine in the con­crete, Greaves raised con­cerns about dis­eases prison of­fi­cers could take home to their fam­i­lies .

She said in­mates al­so slept with their backs to the walls for fear of sex­u­al at­tack .

"How does a man ad­mit in a hos­tile en­vi­ron­ment he was raped in prison and he had had sex with oth­er men or he was forced to put on a sex show for some per­vert­ed se­nior of­fi­cial?" Greaves asked.

Say­ing the lo­cal gay and les­bian com­mu­ni­ty kept a low pro­file, Greaves took is­sue with the 2003 com­ments of a judge who was sen­tenc­ing a rapist who was de­scribed as hav­ing the fem­i­nine touch. She not­ed the judge had said the per­son risked get­ting raped if sent to prison.

"This is un­for­tu­nate even though many per­sons might have found it amus­ing. We have triv­i­alised the rape of our women, so many oth­er women ex­pe­ri­ence that pain," she added.