Clevon Raphael

Thir­ty-three years ago for­mer An­gli­can Bish­op of T&T the Rt Rev Clive Ormis­ton Ab­du­lah found sev­er­al un­savoury fea­tures at the na­tion's pe­nal in­sti­tu­tions.Amaz­ing­ly, most of them were again un­earthed by the re­cent re­port re­leased by the Ryan in­ves­tiga­tive team.The 85-year-old cler­ic head­ed a com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the mod­erni­sa­tion of the coun­try's pe­nal sys­tem. One of its rec­om­men­da­tions was to shut down the Car­rera Is­land prison.

Q:Your Lord­ship, 33 years ago you head­ed a Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the mod­erni­sa­tion of the op­er­a­tions of the coun­try's prison sys­tem. Are you sat­is­fied to­day that your team's work was worth the while?

A:(Sit­ting in the porch of his apart­ment at Fort George, Wednes­day af­ter­noon) Cer­tain­ly it then gave what I con­sid­ered the most com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis of what was there.

Why do you think its mod­erni­sa­tion was such an im­por­tant mat­ter?

(Quick­ly re­flect­ing with eyes cast at the ceil­ing) I had raised my voice against the con­di­tions that were there be­cause I used to go in­to the pris­ons, Car­rera, Gold­en Grove, and I wouldn't just take a ser­vice and leave; I used to re­late to the men and so forth. I would pub­licly com­plain about the con­di­tions there. I did not think the peo­ple out­side knew what was go­ing on in­side the walls of the pris­ons.

Why I asked you a while ago whether your team's work was worth the while was in the con­text of what the com­mis­sion was able to achieve in the pur­suit of your man­date.

Right. It was worth the while from two as­pects: one, it gave the coun­try, the Gov­ern­ment, a com­plete analy­sis of what was tran­spir­ing in the sys­tem. For ex­am­ple, it was writ­ten in­to law that the In­spec­tor of Pris­ons has to vis­it the pris­ons a cer­tain num­ber of times, and that the Chief Mag­is­trate should vis­it con­di­tions there, be­cause when you are com­mit­ting a per­son, the in­ten­tion was that these two peo­ple should know the con­di­tions un­der which these peo­ple are go­ing to live.

And whether in fact when that per­son leaves the prison that per­son would have been re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed.

You are no longer in the sys­tem, but do you know if these vis­its are tak­ing place to­day?

(Re­spond­ing as Raphael ex­pect­ed) Well, I don't know...that's your job (heavy chuck­ling) I don't know if they know what is ex­pect­ed of them in this re­gard. That is for you to in­quire in­to, Mr Raphael. (Broad­ly smil­ing)

Fast for­ward to to­day, Your Lord­ship, I imag­ine the team would have put in a lot of work. Yet still we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing al­most the same prob­lems, even on a greater scale to­day, in the sys­tem?

(An­i­mat­ed) Yes, be­cause you see they nev­er got to the root caus­es.

Did your team ever get there?

Yes. We got to the root caus­es and we put for­ward a pro­gramme, but you see they nev­er got it start­ed. The last two Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­ers did start a new at­ti­tude, es­pe­cial­ly in the YTC, where they were able to in­tro­duce a new pat­tern of treat­ing with these fel­lows.

I do not know what is hap­pen­ing in the gen­er­al prison sys­tem and I cer­tain­ly think the Re­mand Yard (shak­ing his head in ut­ter dis­ap­point­ment and dis­gust)–you know that is as close to hell as far as I know, still...

I share your feel­ings, be­cause some years ago I got in­to that area by mis­take and I was stunned over what I saw; there were these big hard­back men bathing in an open-air area... some of them were naked as they were born, hav­ing a bath, and would you be­lieve prison ve­hi­cles were be­ing dri­ven up and down in that area...

It was re­al­ly hor­ri­ble and it was worse when we start­ed in 1980.

Your Lord­ship, did your team dis­cov­er in­ci­dents of il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties be­ing un­der­tak­en by er­rant pris­ons of­fi­cers even at that time?

It was al­leged by of­fi­cers them­selves that smug­gling was tak­ing place in the pris­ons and there was an or­der­ly sys­tem which was open to abuse.

I sup­pose cer­tain pris­on­ers were giv­en spe­cial priv­i­leges, but that pro­duced a whole new at­ti­tude and a whole new pat­tern which was not re­al­ly con­ducive to jus­tice.

Why do you say that?

You see, when a chap be­came an or­der­ly it meant he had ob­vi­ous­ly be­haved him­self in a way that was pleas­ing to his su­pe­ri­or of­fi­cers and so he was giv­en cer­tain priv­i­leges which meant he had the free­dom, to some ex­tent, of the com­pound.

He could have moved in and out of cer­tain places, so that he was aware of what was be­ing said...

Does that still ob­tain to­day?

(Cu­ri­ous­ly look­ing at Raphael) Does it? I don't know, so I can­not an­swer that one...it would be in­ter­est­ing for you to find out. You see, this is the sec­ond as­sign­ment I have giv­en you in ten min­utes (loud laugh­ter).

Our re­port speaks of that, oh yes, but I don't know whether any­thing was done about it to cor­rect it.

Is it your view, Bish­op Ab­du­lah, that if the ma­jor­i­ty of your rec­om­men­da­tions were ac­cept­ed and act­ed up­on, the sit­u­a­tion to­day would not have been as hor­ren­dous as it is?

No. Be­cause you see, when we rec­om­mend­ed that the cells should have a bath­room and for re­lax­ation there should be a tele­vi­sion–you know, not in each room but cer­tain­ly in the lounge or what­ev­er. The me­dia picked that up and said the com­mis­sion now rec­om­mends that these pris­on­ers be treat­ed like guests at ho­tels (an iron­ic chuck­le). I mean that was be­ing very sil­ly.

It is the same that is hap­pen­ing with Dr Ryan's re­port.

What specif­i­cal­ly you are re­fer­ring to?

The re­port made a very ob­jec­tive state­ment and sud­den­ly the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is now faced with the har­row­ing ques­tion; Mr Com­mis­sion­er, how is it that 40 or 50 per cent of the po­lice ser­vice are rogue po­lice?

Dr Ryan had ex­plained that in fact what had hap­pened is that in their re­search­es they said a lot of peo­ple in­ter­viewed had the im­pres­sion that that per­cent­age of the po­lice were not do­ing their work, were cor­rupt and so on.

He just re­port­ed what the peo­ple told him, he did not say what the Com­mis­sion­er said he had said, but the press put it in a cer­tain way that Mr Williams couldn't do any­thing else but re­spond. (Frown­ing) But that's not the way to do it.

Your Lord­ship, did you all re­ceive any re­ports of "hits" be­ing or­dered on oth­ers from in­side the pris­ons?

I don't think we heard of "hits" as such, but we knew that it was not dif­fi­cult to com­mu­ni­cate with peo­ple out­side whom the pris­on­ers seem to have ei­ther con­tacts with or some pow­er over some that they could get cer­tain things done.

Of course, at the time we were op­er­at­ing there were no cell phones but now they are throw­ing over the fence items like cell phones just as food used to be thrown over the fence and so on.

But I was glad to see that the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice has in­di­cat­ed that they are clos­ing down Car­rera. We had rec­om­mend­ed that a long time ago.

What was the ra­tio­nale then for shut­ting it down?

Oh, ab­solute­ly it had to be shut down, be­cause it was too ex­pen­sive to main­tain. Every­thing had to be brought in from the main­land: food had to be brought in, the launch was al­ways break­ing down, when there was no rain, wa­ter had to be brought in...it was re­al­ly a very ex­pen­sive op­er­a­tion.

In ret­ro­spect, Your Lord­ship, all things tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, would you agree that the work of the com­mis­sion was not giv­en the kind of re­spect you all ex­pect­ed?

I would say yes to that. How­ev­er, Prof Ramesh De­osaran did a lot of work in terms of crim­i­nol­o­gy and the treat­ment of pris­on­ers and so on, and he and his staff did in­deed make good use of my re­port.

But of course he went much fur­ther, so from that stand­point it con­tributed to the un­der­stand­ing at that time, and even now, of mod­ern pe­nal prac­tices.

Are you sure, Your Lord­ship, there wasn't any kind of dis­ap­point­ment by your com­mis­sion on the over­all of­fi­cial re­sponse to your as­sign­ment, which pro­duced sev­er­al pre­lim­i­nary re­ports and a fi­nal re­port?

(A for­lorn ex­pres­sion with one fin­ger on his left cheek): Yes. It was al­ways a sad thing to know we had done all that work, that the re­port was laid in Par­lia­ment, peo­ple spoke on it and I no­ticed some years ago ref­er­ence was made of it. But in fact it was a stan­dard piece of work.

Com­ing back to what is now the con­tro­ver­sial Ryan re­port, did your com­mis­sion look at the eth­nic com­po­si­tion of the in­mates?

Oh yes, very much so.

Did you all make any find­ings which were un­like what the Ryan Re­port was able to un­earth?

No. No. the per­cent­age of in­mates of African (de­scent) was cer­tain­ly high­er than that of East In­di­ans.

But if you look at the so­cio-eco­nom­ic fac­tors you will recog­nise that the dropout ar­eas (places where most peo­ple dropped out school, have dif­fi­cul­ty with the so­ci­ety and so on) that the per­cent­age is high­er in places like Laven­tille.

But you know, Clevon, we found the in­mates ready and will­ing to do bet­ter, but they nev­er had the op­por­tu­ni­ty and I find still to­day, all peo­ple want to do bet­ter.

Have you heard the cyn­i­cal view of some of our cit­i­zens to­wards our broth­ers and sis­ters of Laven­tille: "Dem fel­las can­not change, dey too bad. Get rid of all of them"?

Oh yes, I have heard that and of course it al­so sup­ports the view "Hang them high," that those who killed should al­so pay the price.

But I have found that they want to do bet­ter. They want to bet­ter them­selves. Many of them have start­ed off on the wrong foot; you have par­ents who are not re­al par­ents, the ab­sence of fa­thers in the homes and even the ab­sence of moth­ers in the con­text of moth­ers hav­ing to go out to work. There is no­body to look af­ter the kids, they come home from school and nowhere to go and would come in­to easy reach of those fel­lows on the block who want to use them for var­i­ous ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties.

Time has run out and we did not say one word about East­er. How do you see the East­er mes­sage im­pact­ing on the ills plagu­ing our so­ci­ety?

The mes­sage of East­er is that God took the tragedy of our mis­takes–and of course the great­est tragedy was the cru­ci­fix­ion of Christ–and turned it in­to an op­por­tu­ni­ty for new life; and new life is about hope and a vi­sion that it can be bet­ter.