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Gov’t identifies land to build new, modern prison – Holness

Loop News

September 5, 2022 4:16 PM ET

3 mins read

In recognising the need to upgrade Jamaican prisons, the Government has reiterated that it has identified land to build a proper prison facility locally.

The statement was made by Prime Minister Andrew Holness while responding to a question during a Jamaican diaspora town hall meeting in Trininad and Tobago last week.

For years there has been a back and forth in the debate to build another prison in Jamaica since the 2015 offer by the United Kingdom to the then People’s National Party (PNP) Administration.

There were initial reports that the Holness Administration had rejected that offer in 2017, but Holness stated in 2020 that he did not reject the offer that was made to the previous government.

Asked last week whether the Government has launched a drive to build more prisons in Jamaica, Holness responded: “We didn’t launch an initiative to build more prisons.

“To be frank with you, I think any society would want to build less prisons, but we do need to upgrade our prisons,” he admitted.

“We are now focusing on building specialised, high-security prisons, and we have identified land to build-out a proper prison structure for Jamaica.

“So that is in the process of being developed, but I don’t think we have announced it,” said Holness.

In fact, during his contribution to the 2022-2023 Budget Debate in the House of Representatives in March, Holness first made mentions of the Government’s plans to build a new prison when he described the current correctional facilities locally as a “national security risk”.

“Too often our intelligence points to crimes being directed from prisons, including the ordering of murders,” he told the House of Representatives then.

He added: “The phones and (other) contraband do not walk into the prisons by themselves. As it stands now, our prisons are a national security risk.”

The prime minister said then that the Government would be moving to address that risk with, among other things, the construction of a modern, high-security prison.

He said then that having last year tasked Minister of National Security, Dr Horace Chang, and the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) with the task of finalising the designs for a high-security prison, the plans are close to completion, and the land has been located and secured.

“We consider this a matter of great urgency… to be expedited through the public investment process,” Holness said at the time.

He noted that efforts will be made to find the funding to start the project in the upcoming fiscal year, which got under way on April 1 this year.