Prison system fails remandees

ANOTHER breakout was reported in West New Britain’s Lakiemata Prison where 16, of the 24, escapees were shot dead on Sunday.
This is the fourth reported breakout in the country’s prisons for this year.
Last month, 17 prisoners escaped from Kerevat Prison in East New Britain with seven recaptured.
That was the second for Kerevat.
The first in January saw six prisoners escaped with one recaptured.
Beon’s prison in Madang recorded 24 escapees also in January.
Going back to last October, 26 inmates from West New Britain’s Lakiemata Prison escaped and 24 are still on the run after cutting the outer fence of the facility and dashing for freedom in midday Oct 10. Only two fugitives were recaptured.
Last November, 22 prisoners escaped from Beon Prison in Madang and nine escaped from Kainantu’s Bundaira Prison in Eastern Highlands with two recaptured.
Correctional Services records has it that the number of prison escapees in 2022 was less than those of previous years.
Commissioner Stephen Pokanis was reported to have said the prison system in the country houses between 4,000 and 5,000 prisoners annually and that in past years, the number of people who escaped were about 400 annually: 2018 – about 380 escapees; 2021 – 270 and 2022 – it had come down to less than 220.
The continuous jailbreaks in prisons within the last three months are not a coincidence but telltale signs of the age-long disorder plaguing the PNG prisons system to which the authorities have turned a blind eye.
Jailbreak is inevitable when people, who had a brush with the law are kept in prison awaiting trial in perpetuity.
People are stressed.
You lock up somebody who is presumed innocent for years and nobody is talking about trial and nobody is giving them information, it’s natural for people to become violent in such a situation.
One thing for certain is that the successive jailbreaks were a product of the deep rot in the PNG prison system begging to be urgently addressed.
Sacking of any officials relating to jailbreaks can be seen as only a face-saving or superficial effort, which would not be enough to fix the inherent problems in the PNG prison system.
Problems range from mostly under-funding, overcrowded cells, maybe shortage of prison vans to convey inmates to court for trial, poorly paid and unmotivated prison officials, to mention but a few.
It is true that our prisons have, over the years, been a source of concern due to overcrowding, understaffing, lack of adequate medical care, inadequate provisions for female and juvenile detainees, poor administration, long detention of those awaiting trial and limited access to legal advice and representation.
These have frequently led to poor health conditions including frequent jailbreaks.
It seems the prisons have become disciplinary centres rather than being reform schools, where persons who come in conflict with the law are sent for reformation and eventually move back into the society as better persons.
It is a failure of the entire justice system not to respect people who come in conflict with the law, not to recognise that they are presumed innocent and to treat their cases expeditiously.
The majority of persons in prisons are remand prisoners.
It is not unnatural for a prisoner who feels hopeless and dehumanised to resort to jailbreak, especially because the system that is supposed to rehabilitate them has rather broken their spirit.
The successive jailbreaks recorded in recent times should be a wake-up call for the Government to address the problems with the nation’s prisons.