With all that’s been going on, the story headlined “Money budgeted for a new prison” should not go unnoticed. Despite all the efforts to make improvements to St. Maarten’s penitentiary, the complex remains outdated and inadequate.
Justice Minister Egbert Doran mentioned an amount of 27 million Netherlands Antillean guilders. However, his colleague in charge of Finance Ardwell Irion pointed out that all the necessary funding might not appear on the 2020 budget, as the project probably won’t be completed this year.
Few pertinent details including the exact location are yet available, but together with the preparation of container cells and recent signing of a covenant for electronic monitoring with ankle bracelets, this plan should go a long way in relieving the current detention capacity crisis. It could even become possible to bring back local inmates transferred to Curaçao and the Netherlands due to lack of space at Pointe Blanche in the foreseeable future.
The Dutch government had set investments in the police corps and prison system on the island as condition for more badly-needed liquidity support to the tune of NAf. 50 million. That the European Court on several occasions blamed the Kingdom of the Netherlands for violating human rights of detainees by keeping them at the Philipsburg police cells too long no doubt played a role.
Soon after the onslaught of the September 2017 hurricanes, then-State Secretary of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations Raymond Knops called it appropriate to construct a new prison with Dutch recovery assistance. The current minister may very well have regretted this a bit later, considering all the related issues that have surfaced since.
Of course, it’s not just about the building. Human resources are also important, which is why the sudden removal of Alwin Keli as prison director without any explanation led to some concern.
The management and staff in general too must be strengthened to go beyond simply housing and guarding detainees by attempting to re-socialise them in earnest. Otherwise any prison, no matter how modern, will remain little more than a revolving door with often the same criminals coming out only to go right back in.
