The head of the Cayman Islands corrections system recently said rules involving prison discipline and complaints procedures must be changed to avoid the potential for future human rights violations.
Commissioner of Corrections and Rehabilitation William Rattray couldn’t specify when those changes would be made, but he said revisions to both the Prisons Law and the system’s rules were being drafted. He said both would need legislative approval before taking effect.
‘They do involve fairly wide-ranging changes to ensure that we’re future-proofing our law against any ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) challenges,’ Mr. Rattray said.
The human rights issue was raised in a December report by the Office of the Complaints Commissioner, which said prison rules at the time of the OCC review could lead to inmates being intimidated or punished for virtually any action they take.
Mr. Rattray said the changes can be handled administratively for now, but he insisted they need to eventually be given the full force of law.
‘I obviously much prefer these things to have a proper legal basis,’ he said.
For instance, once such difficulty with the prison rules involves punishment of prisoners who ‘in any way offend against good order and discipline.’ Mr. Rattray said this rule is far too broad and leaves the door open for abuses.
‘The only charges that should be in the current rules are charges that everybody is very clear about exactly what has happened. To bring a charge of ‘in any way offending against order and discipline’ is far too…open to interpretation.’
Proposed changes to the Prisons Law itself would mainly allow for the creation of specific rules and regulations to be organised in one consolidated document.
Some updating of the law also needs to occur, but Mr. Rattray said most of that would involve repealing sections that no longer apply to Cayman in the modern era.
‘There are many sections in that law that deal with the transfer of prisoners to Jamaica,’ he said. ‘There are parts of that law that deal with capital punishment. None of these things exist (in Cayman) anymore.’
Mr. Rattray also said Cayman needs a better understanding of how prison system oversight works.
‘We don’t have a framework for inspection. We need to have that in place so that the prisons inspectors can be trained against a set of standards and so that they know exactly what it is they’re going to inspect.’
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