Some Armadale girls have been lucky enough to have been transferred to the Diamond Crest Villa in Manchester. - Ian Allen/Staff Photographer

High concrete walls, high perimeter fences with barbed wire, heavy metal doors to reduce prison escapes. The doors are made of steel bars that allow light and air to pass through, but due to the number of prisoners incarcerated in the institutions at any one time, the air is heavy, stale and rank.

This is the situation some 21 girls, wards of the state, who were transferred from the Armadale Juvenile Correctional Centre in St Ann, now have to endure on a daily basis, said Public Defender Earl Witter.

The girls had to be transferred after a fire at Armadale left five dead on the spot. Two girls died later at hospital while others are still in hospital.

Maximum-security prison

While some of the survivors have found peace at their new home in Diamond Crest Villa in Manchester, others, who were taken to the Horizon Remand Centre (HARC), are having it more difficult.

Nine other girls were also transferred to the Horizon Centre, having been taken from the Fort Augusta correctional facility.

According to Witter, the facility was established as a maximum-security prison and/or holding facility for men. He said these males were either hardened criminals who committed serious offences or others accused of serious crimes and considered high-risk adult prisoners.

"It is not a facility that was designed for, nor is it capable of facilitating the process of rehabilitation," Witter said at a press conference at his downtown, Kingston office on Tuesday.

He made a call for the removal of the wards from the HARC, which he said is "quite unfit for holding young females, particularly those who were so traumatised by the frightening events at Armadale".

Concrete slabs

He said the wards were housed two to a cell, without pillows, and were forced to sleep on hard concrete slabs.

According to Witter, the wards say they are only allowed outside for one hour during which they take a bath and empty a bucket provided for them to defecate and urinate. To add to this, he said there was no social activity for them to partake in and this situation would not bring out the best in the children, but rather make them worse than they were when they entered incarceration.

Witter said the circumstances were inhumane and inadequate for the wards of the state.

"The purpose of incarceration is to facilitate and promote rehabilitation, not to retard it," he added.

It is with this comment that the public defender reiterated his point that every effort should be made to relocate the girls to a more suitable accommodation.

kimesha.walters@gleanerjm.com

The wall of the Horizon Remand Centre, off Spanish Town Road, stands in the background as workmen from Incomparable Enterprises Ltd, carry out repair work to a section of the Mother White gully behind it. The institution now houses female wards of the state. - Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer