We treat prisoners like human chattel on a slave plantation, and what's worse is that some of us seem to be proud of it. Meanwhile prison officer aren't doing so well either. This episode is about the response to the COVID-19 outbreak in Her Majesty's Prison, which has been a series of astonishing failures. To know that, you need only listen to the interviews with prison officers, one of which we included this episode. It's otherwise impossible to grasp the scope and breath of everything going horribly wrong.
Firstly, news of the outbreak actually came from an activist, not the prison administration. Then there was no off-site isolation facility immediately ready to take in infected persons despite the risk of a prison outbreak being known for a year. Prison officers are saying not all of them have been vaccinated. How is that possible? It's alleged that untested people are still being remanded to the prison as if there were no pandemic. Officers are short on personal protective equipment (PPE) and have to wash and reuse them. Two workers who had tested positive were allegedly back at work within days. The litany of alleged failures is truly astonishing.
But are you surprised? Let's cut the nonsense and be frank about it - the prison is a horrid place. It's an abomination unfit for animals. But we, as a nation, insist of forcing human beings to go there. In this episode we talk about what has gone wrong, what needs to be done now to manage COVID-19 at the prison, and finally, why the moral aberration that we call "1735" ought to have ended a very, very long time ago.
The host is Kieron Murdoch. The guests are:
This programme first aired on NewsCo Observer Radio 91.1 FM on March 28, 2021. Get the latest news from Antigua and Barbuda at the Antigua Observer online.
