Signs

Is it a sign of the times?  Just across the street from the Anguilla House of Assembly is Her Majesty’s Prison.  Strategically located, you might think.  Well, so it is.  The Ministers of Government and Permanent Secretaries pass by HM Prison every day.  And, every day, they walk and drive alongside a sign that is posted outside the prison.  Is it only me that finds it an odd sign?

“Restricted area.  No trespassing without authorization”.  Restricted area, I can understand.  What I cannot understand is how anybody can give me authorisation to trespass.  If I get permission to enter a restricted area, then, common sense alone tells me that I am not trespassing.  What the designer of this sign appears to have done is to conflate the three well-known phrases, “Restricted area”, “No trespassing”, and “No admittance without authorization”.  Here it is in close-up for you to appreciate it in all its glory.

While we are on the subject of illiterate public administration signs, have you noticed the one at Sandy Ground?  Sandy Ground is a port of entry, where most of the island’s cargo is landed at the jetty and stored in the Customs House.  The Customs House is home to Her Majesty’s Customs.  The sign must have been up for some years, as it is battered and faded.

During all that time, innumerable government officers have driven past the sign.  They must have seen it, and noticed that something was wrong.  Did they not recognise the error?  Did they not realise that the error made HM Customs into something of a laughing stock?  Here is a close-up for your better appreciation.

“HMS Customs”?  We know that the prefix “HMS” is associated with the sea.  And, so it should be.  The letters stand for Her Majesty’s Ship.  They are an indication that a ship in question belongs to the British Navy.  The letters “HMS” are not an acceptable enlargement of, far less an improvement on, the initials “HM”. 

The persons responsible for ordering the production of these signs ought to be ashamed of themselves.

And, what about you, Ron?  Just because some government officer gives you an illiterate draft, does not mean that you have to produce it just as it appears.  Surely, as a professional, it is not below your dignity to call up the government Department boss and ask him or her if he or she really wants to appear to be a fool.  You might point out that the risk is that people will be afraid to bring you their sign-work for fear that you are going to be the originator of illiterate signage.  For your own protection you need to make that call.

You may say it is a little thing.  I insist it is not.  It is a sign that we live in a post-literate society.  We are administered by semi-literates, er, the educationally challenged.  We make a laughing stock of ourselves by allowing such persons to put pen to paper in the public service.

Do we need a new Department of government literacy? 

Is that not what the school system is supposed to be?

Prisons

More Anguilla news available on Hansard.  As a result of another Parliamentary Question, Minister Chris Bryant has given us some more interesting news about Anguilla.  We learn that the Anguilla prison is presently holding nearly twice as many prisoners as it was originally built to house.  How many prisoners to a cell is that?  Is this statistic not a recipe for increasing prison violence?

Overseas Territory	Certified normal accommodation	Current population
Anguilla	35	58
BVI	98	120
Cayman Islands	145	216
Montserrat	52	15
Turks & Caicos	102	108, rising shortly to 150

More interesting, perhaps, is the note to the Turks and Caicos Islands figures.  How does Bryant know that the prison population is shortly to be increased by nearly 39% to a total of 150? 

And will the increase consist of politicians or merely of lawyers?

The real concern for us is that Anguilla is the only Overseas Territory in the West Indies to have its prison so over-filled.  Unless a new prison is built, I would suggest that the Magistrates should be using alternative means of sentencing to an increasing extent.  Failure to do so will risk prison rapes, the spread of HIV, and more burnings. 

In order to further reduce the risk of uncontrollable prison violence, the Governor should be actively considering releasing significant numbers of long-term, non-violent prisoners whose conduct has indicated remorse and who are not thought to represent a continuing threat to society.

PS:  24 October 2009 - Hansard has, without apology, altered the webpage linked to above to correct the footnote. It now appears attached to "Certified normal accommodation" instead of "Current population".  They could, at least, have said sorry for having originally mislead us.

Caning

Corporal punishment is purely pragmatic.  It is intended to make the cost of law-breaking exceed the benefits.  Modern punishments for children and for adults reinforce the notion that there is no punishment that will deter a determined offender.  In today’s Anguilla following the rules is a matter of choice, and is the norm only for very well brought up persons.  Hooligans have the option to ignore the rules.  There are no consequences of any significance.

When I was a school boy, caning day involved the entire school body assembling to witness the canings that were to be delivered in public.  Our school children were mischievous as ever.  But, we were safer than today.  Violent boys met a violent punishment.  Violent adults were the exception, not the norm.

By contrast today, when the sissifyication of education is almost complete, disorder in school has become the norm.  There are no consequences for the use by children of obscene or disrespectful language.  Teaching is often impossible.  Teachers hide in the common room, afraid to confront violent and uncontrollable kids.  Some even side with a disorderly child, particularly if he has a belligerent parent.  A teacher using force to stop an assault is likely to be interviewed by the police, and punished for having employed unauthorized corporal punishment. 

Singapore does not have a problem with indiscipline in school.  What follows is a video of a school boy being punished for breaking the rules.

I don’t think either he or any of the other students were likely to treat breaking rules lightly.  For a few weeks at least, until the memory wore off.

Singapore does not have a problem with drunk driving.  What follows is the punishment that was awarded to one first offender.  Not everyone will have the stomach to see it through to the end.

I shudder to think what the punishment could be for a second offence.  I suppose that is the point.  There is never any second offence.  And, the cost to the tax payer of such a penal system is little or nothing.

The pros and cons of corporal punishment for adults have been debated for years. 

All in all, I think the pros win.  Imprisonment is the barbaric, dehumanising and counterproductive punishment.

I advocate corporal punishment in school and in the court system as an alternative.

Incarceration

The Governor alerted us to this statistic at his press conference earlier this week.  Anguilla has one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the world.  The eighth edition of the World Prison Population List has been published.  It gives details of the number of prisoners held in 218 independent countries and Overseas Territories.  It shows the differences in the level of imprisonment in those countries.  It makes it possible for us to compare how many persons per hundred thousand each one of these countries makes a habit of incarcerating.  These are the highlights:

A little research reveals that in the USA in FY 2001, the average operating cost to incarcerate one inmate in the Federal Bureau of Prisons system was US$22,632.  That is more than it cost the US taxpayer to send the same person to college.  It has been estimated that in Pennsylvania the average prisoner cost the taxpayer US$33,615 a year.  For about US$18,000 he could have got a college education.  For about $25,000 he could be followed around on the street by a parole agent, one on one.  Are the comparisons likely to be any different for Anguilla?

In Britain in 2007 the estimated annual cost of imprisonment was 37,500 pounds sterling.  A family of five, I believe, could be kept on that sum.

Curiously, the death penalty is the most expensive punishment there is.  In the US, a recent study found that the median death penalty case costs US$1.26 million.  By comparison, non-death penalty cases (to end of incarceration) costs a mean of $740,000. 

Does anyone know what the figures are for the average operating cost to incarcerate one inmate in the Anguilla prison?  The cost of the prison service is in the Budget.  Anyone with a copy of the budget or the estimates should be able to tell us.  First, find out the number of prisoners in Anguilla at any given time this year, then take the average.  The result will be more or less accurate for the entire year.

Which makes us recall that it was the Quakers who promoted the warehousing of prisoners in penitentiaries as an alternative to corporal punishment.  They also believe that when you are attacked you should not attempt to defend yourself but should turn the other cheek.  So, who wants to be a Quaker?

Despite poverty, Islamic countries maintain a very low crime rate thanks to a variety of corporal punishments.  A man makes a habit of stealing?  Off with his hand!  Another makes a habit of raping?  Off with his penis!  What does it cost Yemen or Saudi Arabia?  One hour of one surgeon’s time?

I am reminded that this is a moment of severe economic crisis.  Hint, hint…

Prison

Sentence Planning. There is an initiative underway in the BVI for the rehabilitation and reformation of prisoners. It is a project called the “Sentence Planning Programme”. I learned about it in an article dated 18 April 2007 in the Cayman Net News. The article read in part,

According to information obtained from the Sentence / Development Planning Project, “Sentence Planning focuses on assisting prisoners to change their criminal lifestyle by taking the opportunities to address their offending behaviour.

“The document added, “At the heart of this process is identifying a plan to reduce those risks and meet the needs in a sequenced and coordinated way in preparation for community reintegration.”

The programme is being implemented in the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos, BVI and Anguilla. The project is being spear-headed by Natalie Joseph-Caesar, the Education and Development Coordinator at HM Prison at Northward in the Cayman Islands. It is her picture that graces this article. I was impressed, as I am sure we all are. I look forward to learning in the local press how the project is progressing. Perhaps the Superintendent of Prisons will publish something on it.