Archive for April 6th, 2009
Rattray says prison not negligent
(CNS): Dr. William Rattray, the Commissioner of Corrections and Rehabilitation, has said that the Cayman Islands Prison Service (HMCIPS) did not negligently put Sabrina Schirn’s life at risk, following the announcement that a serving prisoner who was on a work release programme had been arrested for her murder. “Whilst recognising that this is a tragedy for the family, it could also undermine public confidence in HMCIPS,” he said before justifying how the work release programme is managed at a media briefing on Friday morning.
“This will be small consolation to the family but I hope that what I have to say will help Sabrina’s family and the wider community to understand that HMCIPS did, and continues to do, everything it can to reduce the risk to any member of the community.”
In what appeared to be an exercise of damage limitation regarding the prison’s responsibility, the commissioner said that before any prisoner can work outside the secure perimeter of HMP Northward, a thorough security risk assessment is undertaken.
“This risk assessment, which examines both static and dynamic factors, is the most sophisticated available. Prior to the introduction of this assessment, HMCIPS conducted an international review of available security risk assessment instruments and settled on the instrument currently used. It is impossible to find, let alone create, a risk assessment instrument that can possibly predict, with 100% certainty, human behaviour,” he added.
Rattray said he had 33 years as a prison professional and prison professionals have to take risks but he said there was no instrument that can predict human behaviour with one hundred percent certainty.
“Society wants us to ensure secure custody but also wants us to rehabilitate prisoners. Every time we reduce a prisoner’s security level to facilitate his/her rehabilitation we take a risk for, and I repeat again, there is no perfect predictive instrument. Nonetheless, we have confidence in the instruments we use whilst understanding they are not 100% reliable.”
He said the incident was an aberration which could not have been predicted by any instrument currently available to predict human behaviour anywhere in the world.
“HMCIPS is an internationally high performing prison service and our track record, benchmarked internationally, is something the Cayman people can be proud of despite this tragic incident. Having said that, whilst we have confidence in our procedures, clearly, we have begun a thorough review to determine what lessons can be learned.”
Despite the fact that a serving prisoner at HMP Northward has been arrested, Rattray said he has not been found guilty of any crime and therefore he would not focus on the individual who has been arrested as that could both prejudice the investigation and any subsequent prosecution whilst also potentially prejudicing the individual’s right to a fair trial.
Answering questions, Rattray revealed more about the details of how the prisoners on the farm work programme are supervised. He said that some 8-12 prisoners work on 200 acres of open land, and are supervised by two horticultural prison officers.
He said the prisoners on the programme were category C and D but could be serving time for violent offences, though he said they would have had to have served a considerable amount of their sentence before they would be eligible to join. He did, however, say that the 38 year old prisoner that has been arrested for Sabrina’s murder was not serving time for a violent offence. He said there would not be a knee jerk reaction to the situation but there would be a review of the supervision situation.