If The Past Administration Thought The Prison Deal Was Good Why Did They Not Accept It And Be Done With It?

As news broke that Jamaican author­i­ties had reject­ed the $5.5 bil­lion dol­lar deal from Great Britain , social Media lit up with opinions.
The deal would have seen the Former colo­nial pow­er help­ing to fund the con­struc­tion of a new prison on the Island but would also result in hun­dreds of pris­on­ers being dumped on the Island as well.
According to esti­mates the $5,5 bil­lion that the British pro­posed to con­tribute would have rep­re­sent­ed only 40% of the actu­al cost.
Which would leave the Island hold­ing the bag on find­ing fund­ing for the oth­er 60% which would amount to just under 8 billion.
As well as tak­ing on hun­dreds of pris­on­ers some­how con­nect­ed to the Island already in British pris­ons and accept­ing Jamaicans in Britain who run afoul of their laws into perpetuity.
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As astro­nom­i­cal as those mon­e­tary fig­ures are for Jamaica , it is the intend­ed British dump of over 300 pris­on­ers on the Island which ought to shock Jamaicans everywhere.
None of those peo­ple were con­vict­ed of com­mit­ting any crimes on the Island.
It’s impor­tant to rec­og­nize that accept­ing the deal would have opened up a con­duit for Britain to dump any per­son vague­ly con­nect­ed to Jamaica who com­mits on offence in Britain onto the Island.

Prison Deal A £25m Gift Wrapped Trojan Horse.

The ini­tial deal was first offered to the pre­vi­ous PNP Administration led by for­mer Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller .
As far as the PNP is con­cerned they had made no deci­sion on whether or not to accept the deal which was offered to the Island on the occa­sion of the vis­it of then Prime Minister David Cameron.
Nevertheless sources close to the par­ty revealed that the Portia Simpson Administration was lean­ing heav­i­ly toward accept­ing the deal , large­ly because the British Government would have pro­vid­ed monies to care for pris­on­ers the pris­on­er to be sent back for a peri­od of about two years.
What was alleged­ly pro­posed to care for each pris­on­er by British author­i­ties dif­fered vast­ly from what Jamaica is able to allot to the care of a sim­i­lar pris­on­er on the Island.
That sweet­en­er was enough of an entice­ment to have the tongues of for­mer admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials wagging.

Now that the JLP Government has appro­pri­ate­ly reject­ed this Trojan horse, mem­bers of the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion and the usu­al bleed­ing hearts in the crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty are quick to point out that the nation’s pris­on’s are below inter­na­tion­al standards.
Their self right­eous cru­sade is devoid of any con­sid­er­a­tion of the exist­ing crime sta­tis­tics, and the toll mur­ders and oth­er seri­ous crimes are hav­ing on the psy­che of the country.
The coun­try’s lead­er­ship should not waste a sin­gle night’s sleep wor­ry­ing over the com­fort lev­el of crim­i­nals . They made con­scious deci­sions to com­mit heinous crimes.
They made their beds they ought to sleep in them.

At the time of Cameron’s arrival on the Island the then leader of the Opposition and now Prime Minister Andrew Holness opined that the mon­ey being sug­gest­ed for the prison would be bet­ter put to use in education.
I do not have specifics on why the offer was reject­ed by the gov­ern­ment, suf­fic­ing to say that the very idea that our coun­try would be accept­ing pris­on­ers who had not been con­vict­ed of any crime in Jamaica is a non-starter.

At the same time the the Opposition lead­er’s state­ment that those funds could be bet­ter served if allo­cat­ed to edu­ca­tion missed the mark then.
If part of, or whol­ly the rea­son the deal was reject­ed final­ly, they also miss the mark now.
Conflating nation­al secu­ri­ty and edu­ca­tion is reck­less and a clear dere­lic­tion of respon­si­bil­i­ty to a crit­i­cal and fun­da­men­tal func­tion of Government, which is to pro­tect the nation.
We need an edu­cat­ed workforce.
We also need pris­ons to put peo­ple who are threats to soci­etal order.
It’s not a zero sum game we need both.
We do know that edu­cat­ed , employed peo­ple may be less like­ly to com­mit crimes.
What we also know is that many of the crimes being com­mit­ted on the Island have at their gen­e­sis some very edu­cat­ed and well-placed people.
We need pris­ons for them,..

Conflating edu­ca­tion with nation­al secu­ri­ty require­ments is reck­less at it’s core. It plays into the mis­in­formed idea that if only peo­ple are edu­cat­ed and have jobs they do not com­mit crimes.
That has been the nar­ra­tive guid­ing nation­als secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy for too long, a mind­set which is tied to the Privy Council’s deci­sion to pre­vent hang­ing of murderers.
The mod­els they gen­er­al­ly point to are (1) in Asian nations which some­times have strin­gent laws which are heavy on their puni­tive com­po­nent which they nev­er both­er to mention.
Or (2) the Scandinavian mod­els which are large­ly eth­nic mono­lith­ic wealthy soci­eties in which Governments take care of much of their cit­i­zens most basic needs.
Of course there are going to be less crimes in those societies.
Jamaica is nowhere near where Scandinavia is so we must build prisons.
This deal seemed to have been just a bad one for Jamaica.

On this par­tic­u­lar issue the Government should ignore the bark­ing of the Political oppo­si­tion. If the past PNP Administration thought it was such a great deal they would have been hap­py to sign Jamaica away for it.
How the Government responds to the lit­tle mon­grels in the eat-a-food crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty is it’s problem.
You ele­vat­ed them and gave them clout , deal with their haranguing…