It’s not a good thing when your only defense for criticism is, “Well it was a lot worse before.” That, in essence, was the Kolbe defense for what has been happening in Hattieville. Granted, the prison is better than it used to be and for that I say, “Okay. You did a reasonable job in some respects.” Of course there was probably no way in the world to have made it worse, such was the state of the prison before Kolbe took it over! Doing well in some respects, however, should not be a reason for not being criticized when criticism is warranted, and believe me, there are things going on up there that aren’t right.
The religious angle is of serious concern. A person who is on remand, as well as a person who has already been convicted and is doing time, loses some of his or her rights, most notably his or her freedom, but – and this is a big but – not the right to worship the way he or she chooses to worship! Refusing to allow representatives of other religions to have contact with inmates is a classic example of constitutionally prohibited religious intolerance, period. So is using loudspeakers to constantly broadcast material that is specific to only one set of beliefs. Prisoners are a captive audience, and as I pointed out last week, people in a captive situation choosing not to participate in the boss’ religion will inevitably do “harder time” than those who do, and they may very well find out that trustee status and early release for good behavior are not available to them. There is probably no specific order that can be pointed to, but as Bob Dylan sang 40 years ago, “Keep a clean nose. Watch for plainclothes. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
There are other problems. Kolbe had a contract with GOB. According to reliable sources, that contract expired somewhere around the middle of 2007, therefore, Kolbe is now operating without a current contract! In addition to this little problem, the Board, the legally constituted body that is supposed to act as GOB’s watchdog over the prison, can best be described as “defunct,” a synonym for “dead” or “extinct.” Belize’s prison is presently being run without any oversight at all, a real concern when even the Ombudsman, miracle of miracles, has documented the use of a stun gun as an instrument of torture on at least two occasions.
I refer to that documentation as a miracle of miracles because the Ombudsman has done absolutely nothing to justify his salary, vehicle and expense account. He then went on to say that what transpired was not a criminal offense. The man obviously needs to study the Constitution, you know, the section that explicitly prohibits the use of torture or cruel and inhumane treatment. If being handcuffed and then shocked with 50,000 volts of electricity doesn’t qualify as torture and cruel and inhumane treatment, then what does? Even more disturbing allegations have surfaced regarding the deaths of inmates in custody, most notably the circumstances surrounding the death of Mark “T Dog” Stuart. The “official” story does not ring true and there are allegations that Stuart’s death was a cold-blooded execution, sanctioned by and carried out by the authorities.
The kind of favoritism that allowed inmates accused of and convicted of violent crime to leave the prison in order to visit family and party is not just a recent phenomenon. The “streets” have known about this for a long time, and the factor that appears to determine whether an inmate is granted this privilege or not, is whether those particular inmates have access to dollars. These inmates have been seen out “on leave” all over the place by a number of people. Is this the kind of behavior that we should expect from a prison management that doesn’t tolerate criticism and apparently thinks that it is answerable to no one?
“We made a mistake,” doesn’t fly, at least not with me. Given Mr. Puga’s previous problems, he should not have been hired by Kolbe for any position! It’s not as though the man’s problems as a senior police officer were a secret: they were quite public. And, given the record of this police department over the last several years, it doesn’t take a Ph. D. to recognize that when the department fires an officer for the kind of things that Mr. Puga was accused of, well, if they couldn’t tolerate that guy, he was “Trouble” with a capital “T.” You put him in charge of “security?” Get real!
Of course the “new hire” is nothing to write home about. It’s the same “old boy” network that has been driving Belize into the ground for years. I am reminded of the scene in American college football. Become a coach at one school and lose, lose, lose. Don’t worry; another school can’t wait to hire you. Do the same at your next school? Don’t worry; you’ll be hired before you can say “Jackie Robinson,” if you’re a white coach. Meanwhile, black coaches who have proven themselves by serving as successful assistant coaches for years, can’t even get an interview for a head coaching job. Out of 119 Division 1 schools, there are only 8 African-American coaches. The same tired old white retreads go from failure to failure.
In Belize, it’s “party affiliation” instead of skin color that does the trick. The new Deputy Director for the prison is a former Commissioner of Police. This is the same guy who illegally arrested Kenny Morgan for exercising his right of free speech while in the visitors’ gallery of the House of Representatives; illegally because unless the Speaker of the House specifically requests police intervention, the police have no jurisdiction inside the House chamber, and the police were not asked to take action in this incident. He then suggested to Mr. Morgan that the charges would be dropped if he, get this, publicly apologized to the Prime Minister! Kenny Morgan didn’t apologize and the charges were thrown out anyhow because they lacked any merit. During his tenure as Commissioner, he appeared to run the Department in the usual manner – as a tool of the ruling party.
After retiring from the Police Department, he was appointed head of the Immigration Department, where he was despised by the staff for his high- handed and autocratic management style. Two hundred brand new machine readable Belize passports disappeared during his stewardship under interesting circumstances. They had been moved from their usual secured spot to a less secured place during the day. They were gone that same night, and the building showed absolutely no signs of forced entry!
Two employees had their reputations smeared as a result, but there was no real evidence that pointed to their involvement, and the whispers around the department suggested that responsibility for the theft may have originated at a much higher level.
Now Kolbe has hired him to replace the fired Oscar Puga. No doubt there are a fair number of people out there; people with the experience and the qualifications to deserve that job, but excuse me, those people apparently lack the most important qualification. They aren’t ruling party loyalists who can be depended on to do the party’s bidding without hesitation. So they don’t even get any consideration and the good ol’ boy, the “white coach” with the losing record, gets another chance to earn a princely salary.
When people wear their religious beliefs on their sleeves, they expose themselves to more scrutiny than the average bear. They may claim that this is not fair, but what is wrong with being held to the same standards that they try to hold others to? It’s called “practice what you preach,” and it appears that in too many cases, this isn’t happening.
The Bible doesn’t sanction playing “footsie” with politicians, nor does Scripture approve of the dispensing of favors in return for money. A true Christian can’t knowingly allow torture when he is in a position to prevent it. The Bible also regards true worship as being real when it comes from the heart, not when it is coerced and, if the allegations about the death of “T Dog” are true, then the authorities have committed the same crime that a lot of the inmates are confined for. It’s called murder.
It appears that the powers that be in today’s Belize have made a decision to lock up our poor citizens after they commit crimes, instead of spending the money and doing the work necessary to reduce crime by reducing poverty. It’s a penny wise and pound foolish strategy that in the end will cost us far more in dollars – jailing people is far more expensive than educating them and creating jobs for them – not to mention the social dislocation and chaos that such a policy allows. We are now 5th on the list of countries in the world as regards locking up our people, 459 per 100,000 to be exact. There are at least a couple of hundred countries that imprison a lower percentage of their population than we do. Actually, it’s really a damn shame and the least we can do is to make sure that our prison is run without the same social ills, favoritism and political interference, that have gotten us here in the first place! Nobody in their right mind has any faith whatsoever that there is such a thing as “justice” in Belize. A society without justice is a society on the edge. It won’t take much for us to fall off.