Ex-con bats for conjugal visits

Seven years after the government announced its bold intent to introduce conjugal visits in the nation's prisons, inmates are still waiting for any legal action, as the proposal remains unfulfilled.

Instead, some are reportedly shelling out big bucks through a back-door system called 'super visit', in order to get some action.

An ex-convict who served time at one of the country's correctional facilities revealed the covert arrangements made by inmates to see their partners.

"Mi babymother and different woman used to come look fi me. You have to arrange it, give them the name of who a come, because the woman can't just come deh pon the block say dem a visit," he explained.

Visits, the ex-con said, typically lasted around 20-25 minutes.

"So you ago pay the money fi deh inna a secret room with your wife. All if you nuh have no wife, if your fiancee have the money can pay fi super visit, she can. So you can do wah you want do in a the room, kiss up and love up quick and fast."

In 2017, then National Security Minister Robert Montague announced that the Government would introduce conjugal visits. He said that conjugal visits would not be a right of every prisoner and that inmates who benefit would be required to be in a stable relationship.

Montague was shifted from the national security ministry in 2018 and was replaced by Dr Horace Chang. The ministry has conceded that very little has been done to introduce conjugal visits over the past seven years, except from the proposal being in a green paper that was tabled in Parliament in January.

The paper calls for the exploration of "an appropriate mechanism for the introduction of conjugal visits, where there would be designated periods in which an offender client is allowed to be in private with their legal spouse /wife/husband".

"The visit allows contact, including sexual relations, between an offender client and a visitor. The key aims of conjugal visits include preserving an offender client's family ties, promoting the offender client's reintegration into society on release, curbing recidivism and lessening violence within the correctional centre," the green paper states.

Recently, Kahira Jones, one of the accused in the high-profile Vybz Kartel murder case, told the Court of Appeal that he has been deprived of the opportunity for intimacy and the chance to build a family as a result of his incarceration. The ex-con with whom this newspaper spoke argued that persons behind bars are deserving of the opportunity for intimacy.

"The government start [the discussion] it for a reason, it must be that them see the importance for it and how it will affect a man going back into society. Remember say prison a fi rehabilitate, so mi woulda like for it to happen now," he said.

"Just like overseas where they allow trailers for conjugal visits, dem should do it here. A nuh special treatment. It's just that family can keep a man grounded, especially if him have a chance of coming out," the ex-con reasoned.