The shortcomings of Jamaica’s correctional system were again highlighted this month after a riot at the Horizon Adult Remand centre. Forty people were injured during the riot in a facility which is temporarily housing thirty-three juveniles.

The riot at the Remand Centre is believed to have been caused by very poor conditions in which the inmates live. Police and military were sent in and are believed to have over-reacted. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, and a delegation from the UN visited ten days later and investigated the event. Its medical expert, Derrick Pounder reported that inmates “uniformly had head injuries from multiple blows to the head. Some had been knocked unconscious and didn’t recover consciousness until they got to the hospitals. But the most telling of the injuries were the pattern, what we would call defensive injuries, injuries inflicted when a person tried to protect themselves from harm.”

Those juveniles who are in Young Offenders institutes are also exposed to human rights abuses. The head of the UN team, Manfred Nowak noted that St. Andrew Juvenile Centre for boys had a system of repression and regular corporal punishment. A fire in an Armadale Juvenile Correctional Centre in St Ann last year killed seven teenage girls. A local human rights pressure group, Jamaicans for Justice, has called for the resignation of the head Jamaica’s correctional system. Due to the current instabilities, plans to build a new facility to house 250 young offenders in St James have been put on hold indefinitely.