Bugs crawl over the body of a man as he lies in the insect-infested cell that has been
his home for 40 years.
His starved body is covered in leaking sores.
Various critters have made a meal of his legs, back, and chest.
He looks at the wall, listening to the familiar din that is the chaos of one of the worst
prisons in the world, a place many people go to die.
Forty years, forty long years, and this man has never been proven guilty.
In fact, he is still waiting for his trial, but he’s not holding out much hope he’ll
get a date with a judge.
He could be innocent.
Who knows?
Lost in the so-called system, a system so mean and dark it has often been called a living
hell on earth.
Could the state not even give him a chance to defend himself?
The man we’re talking about, Noel Chambers, was held at a prison in Kingston, Jamaica,
called the “Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre.”
You might not have heard much before about prisons in Jamaica, but let’s just say they
don’t exactly scream “human rights.”
Countless foreigners who have been locked up in the country have described life behind
bars there as being brutal to the extreme.
Beatings are dished out daily by the guards.
Inmates brazenly walk around with knives and machetes.
You worry every day that it will be your last.
And they aren’t exaggerating.
Official reports on the prisons describe them as “horrific,” stating that men live in
overcrowded, filthy cells.
If they can’t pay for extra food, they subsist primarily on “rice and sugary water,”
which is served to them twice a day.
Violence isn’t just common, it’s expected throughout each and every day.
As former inmates have described, if you don’t pay for protection, your life will be miserable.
As for the foreign inmates, almost half of them are from the UK, men who either trafficked
or simply used drugs in Jamaica.
One of those British drug users was a weed smoker who ended up in a juvenile facility.
He had to fight just so he could get a place to sleep other than the floor.
Another Brit went to the adult prison, where he described the guards acting like “animals.”
He said some of those guards were shot dead by inmates, while inmates often stabbed each
other to death with weapons bought from the guards or dished out “serious, serious beatings.”
He said you could “hear the popping sounds” when officers would use thick batons to beat
inmates on their joints.
He summed it up, saying, “There are no human rights at all.”
His stories have been backed up by the UN, with one rapporteur saying he found many inmates
who had been subjected to brutal violence.
The report said, “Being jailed in Jamaica is a harrowing experience even for those who
are just detained and awaiting trial.
Legal proceedings and court appearances often take a long time and can be delayed.”
Let those words sink in, “awaiting trial”... can be delayed.”
Just imagine if you were innocent and you had to spend any amount of time in a place
we’ve just described.
Really imagine what it would be like if you had to spend a year there.
Now imagine you went in, hoping you’d get a speedy trial, and then a year passed, and
then a decade, and then another decade, and another.
That’s what happened to Mr. Chambers, but there are many others with stories just like
his.
In fact, when his story came out, subsequent investigations discovered that there were
inmates who, just like Chambers, had never seen a judge and had wallowed in prisons with
virtually no hope of it ever happening.
A commission that was set up found 15 such inmates who had been behind bars for over
30 years without getting the chance to defend themselves.
How does something so horrible like this happen?
And perhaps more importantly, who is to blame?
Well, some blame the courts rather than the prisons.
The prisons are doing what they’ve been told to do: keep a person locked up until
they are informed that the person's case is going to trial.
The problem is, Jamaica doesn’t have a mental health facility in which to hold certain prisoners.
There used to be one called Bellevue Hospital in Kingston, but that stopped accepting prisoners
in1979.
Since then, those deemed mentally unwell just get thrown in with the other prisoners, and
because some of them are poorly represented and perhaps unfit to act on their own behalf,
they get lost in the system.
But the thing is, Chambers was of sound mind for many years, just the same as many other
prisoners who were said to be not fit for trial.
Reports state that inmates at that prison regularly write to complain about the inhumane
conditions, but often the last people that do that are the prisoners with mental health
problems.
What’s even worse is that some of those inmates essentially rot away because they
can’t properly take care of themselves.
In 1986, 6 years into his sentence, Chambers petitioned the governor-general for his release,
but that petition fell on deaf ears.
In 2005, his family asked that he at least be released on parole since he had served
25 years for a murder he may or may not have committed.
The response to them could have been straight out of the novel Catch-22.
Sure, he deserved to be out due to all the time he’s served, but we can’t let him
out because he hasn’t been found guilty by the courts.
He was serving time not because of the alleged crime but because the courts didn’t even
want to try and convict him of a crime.
He was trapped in a paradox that made him un-releasable.
If that makes little sense to you, don’t worry, it has confused many people since the
news broke.
What’s even more confounding is that various times throughout his 40-year sentence, he
was indeed certified as mentally fit to plead his case, but he never got to do that for
some strange reason.
The last time he had a chance was in 2016, but he was close to death by that time since
he had acute kidney disease and prostate cancer.
Not long after, he showed signs of dementia and couldn’t eat.
It was likely that officials hoped he’d pass away in his dingy cell and be forgotten,
but that didn’t happen, and word soon got out.
A human rights activist who heard about his case had this to say:
“People talk about being lost in corrections.
They are not lost.
Corrections know about them and take care of them every day.
What they are is forgotten; they are forgotten every day and they are forgotten by the courts.”
Prison officers In Jamaica have to check on a person each morning and make sure they have
water at night, but they are also supposed to write reports on the state of inmates if
they don’t look well.
Chambers was clearly dying, and yet no such reports were written.
He was only finally taken to the prison hospital after he was found unresponsive in his cell.
Soon after, he was dead, but the prison tried to hide the fact he’d not been treated at
the prison hospital prior to being found unconscious.
When Chambers died, his body was described as being in a condition so wretched it was
hard to even look at it.
One person said on Twitter, “I just saw the images of NoelChambers body and I cannot
understand this level of cruelty.”
Another comment just said, “That's not real.
No man.
No…”
Twitter wasn’t around when Chambers was first locked up, the same year that Pac-Man
came out.
Jamaicans on Twitter tried to make sense of this, with one saying, “Noel Chambers was
basically tortured for 40 years.”
Another Jamaican Twitter user said about such cases, “There needs to be some form of accountability
for this disregard of mentally ill detainees.”
His story shocked Jamaica and much of the world, but the silver lining to this sad tale
is that at least some good things came out of it.
Nine other prisoners certified as unfit to stand trial actually got a chance to plead
after Noel Chambers’ story was made public and they are now free men.
But tragically, over 130 others in the same position who have been behind bars for years
still haven’t been given a chance to go to court.
If that’s not shocking enough, something even more disturbing came out after Chambers’
death.
This is the story of a man called George Williams.
Just like Chambers, he too is behind bars, and he hasn’t been given a trial date.
Guess how long he’s been incarcerated as possibly an innocent man?
The answer is 49 years!
Yep, you heard that right.
He is one of seven men identified in a recent report which found that they have been in
prison for over 40 years without ever going in front of a judge.
Williams, like Chambers, at times during his sentence, was certified as being fit to stand
trial, but also like Chambers, he still never got his day in court.
This is what he said about that, “I feel so good, but every time I was disappointed
when I learned that my fate may be to die in here before I ever see a courthouse again.”
He said he’s spent almost 50 years with convicted murderers and seen them get out
even as he remains locked up.
He’s even seen guys on death row get released.
He called the prison a living hell, and that quote, “insects feed on my body both day
and night.”
His application was looked at by the director of prosecutions, who said she’d review all
the information but that it couldn’t be rushed.
Without any hint of irony she said, “We can’t take any shortcuts.”
And there has been some good news.
Williams’ case was finally looked at, and he was subsequently released.
His lawyer was over the moon for him but perhaps chose the wrong words when speaking to the
press.
He said, “We are overwhelmed.
Nobody can be as happy as George today having his day in court.
This is what I called swift justice.”
Hmm, perhaps not swift enough.
As for the 49 years behind bars, the lawyer put that down to what he called “bureaucratic
lag.”
When Williams walked out of prison, he was met by a cheering crowd, although it seems
the 71-year old might not have had the best of days just before his release.
A Jamaican newspaper wrote, “George Williams was released from prison after spending close
to 50 years behind bars without a trial.
With a black eye from a beating on the weekend, Williams was met by family members and supporters.”
Just as Williams was being released, another inmate who’d never seen a judge because
he was deemed unfit to stand trial was also set free.
His name is Abraham Lawrence, and he’d spent 25 years behind bars for nothing more than
throwing stones at a police car in 1994.
A psychiatrist said this about the men, “What we are seeing here is clear evidence of exploitation
and structural violence by systems that are in place to protect them.”
Those words came just weeks after an inmate was beaten to death by a guard.
The Jamaican Prime Minister is of course aware of the case of the deceased Chambers and described
the situation as “tragic and heartbreaking,” saying there was a need for prison reform.
He asked for a multi-agency examination to make sure it doesn’t happen again, but you
have to wonder how it happened in the first place.
Following an audit, the government has said that there are now no prisoners like Chambers
and Williams who are lost in the system but added that Jamaica’s infamous horror prisons
need a massive overhaul.
The Labor Party politician Robert Montague called for a new state-of-the-art correctional
facility, but the government says there just isn’t enough room in the budget to build
one.
He said, “We’re not unmindful of the conditions, but the taxpayer is overburdened, and we are
moving with haste to correct the situation.”
Now you need to see how the US treats some prisoners with, “Why Prisoner Proven Innocent
Can't Be Released.”
Or, have a look at “Innocent on Death Row, Here's What You Actually Get When You're Released.”