The Cayman Islands government has paid almost CI$1 million over the past four-and-a-half years to fund the incarceration of three prisoners in maximum security facilities in the UK.
Brothers Osbourne Douglas and Justin Ramoon, convicted of the 2015 murder of Jason Powery, are not the only inmates to be deemed a risk to national security and deported to the UK.
Elmer Wright, who was involved in a home invasion in Prospect in 2017, was also deemed a security threat and transferred in 2020.
The tab for all three prisoners currently runs to $900,000, according to information provided to the Compass under the Freedom of Information Act.
Itemised costs are not available, but it is possible to calculate the cost-per-prisoner for Douglas and Ramoon in 2018 and 2019 at around $90,000 – a significant surcharge on the annual cost of $51,000 of keeping a prisoner at HMP Northward, based on 2021 figures from the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The Cayman government has also funded a visit for six members of Ramoon’s and Douglas’ extended family in 2019 at a cost of almost $27,000. Similar funds have been promised on an annual basis for future visits – though the pandemic has made that impossible up to now – as part of an effort to ensure their right to a family life is protected.
Separate documents provided to the Compass suggest it will cost around $150 million in total to upgrade HMP Northward to make it fit to house Category A prisoners like Douglas, Ramoon and Wright.
Seven prisoners previously moved
At least seven other inmates have been transferred to British prisons using the 1884 Colonial Prisoners Removal Act, according to court documents and information provided to the Compass under the Freedom of Information Act.
Six of those were Jamaican nationals transferred to the UK following a riot at the prison in 1999. The then Police Commissioner David Thursfield, speaking at the time, characterised the move as temporary. He said the men had not necessarily been deemed responsible for damage to the prison but were Category A prisoners that could no longer be held at Northward because of significant damage to the prison estate.
The Prison Papers
The riot, described in the Compass at the time as a “24 hour rampage” involving up to 60 inmates, saw authorities briefly lose control of the prison before armed police were called in to quell the uprising.
There is no record in our archives of how long the six men were kept in the UK or if they were ever returned to Cayman.
An eighth inmate – another Jamaican national named Kenneth Richards – was transported to the UK in 2009 after an escape attempt.
Records of his efforts to contest the transfer are detailed in court documents in the Ramoon and Douglas case.
“The claim was dismissed in 2015 with the judge concluding that the Cayman Islands did not have a sufficiently secure prison estate to cope with the risk presented by Mr. Richards… the interference with his family life was necessary and proportionate,” lawyers for the governor wrote, in submissions to the court, defending the decision to move the brothers to the UK.
There does not appear to be any publicly available guidance document or standard operating procedure for deciding when to move a prisoner out of Cayman. Officials have argued in court that Cayman’s prison cannot hold Category A prisoners.
A separate FOI filed by the Compass shows there are currently two Category A prisoners in Northward, one on remand and one who has been convicted and sentenced.
Ramoon, in one of his affidavits in the case contesting his transfer, argued that he was being harshly treated in comparison to other prisoners. He points out that Steve Manderson, who has escaped from HMP Northward on multiple occasions, remains in Cayman.
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“Similar funds have been promised on an annual basis for future visits – though the pandemic has made that impossible up to now – as part of an effort to ensure their right to a family life is protected.”
How about the right to a family life of the people they murdered?
It seems of late articles are focused on prison, murders and robberies. It’s sad that you don’t seem to have more interesting articles regarding the beauty and development are of Grand Cayman.
They say that “crime doesn’t pay,” but it sure costs a heck of a lot!