Justice Minister Christlyn Moore is denying ever advising prisoners to plead guilty. Moore spoke with reporters in Parliament on Friday. She said during recent visits to certain prisons, some inmates had expressed the desire to plead guilty in their respective matters. Based on those developments, Moore said, “talks were held with the DPP (Director of Public Prosecutions) and the Chief Justice on how persons who claim to be guilty could be facilitated, bearing in mind the backlog (in the court system).” She said: “Coming out of those talks, particularly with the Chief Justice, the judiciary has set aside two weeks to hear guilty pleas from persons who wish to so plead.”
According to Moore, Chief Justice Ivor Archie has set aside the first two weeks in September for those hearings. The minister told reporters “that information was communicated to prisoners via the Legal Aid Office and the Criminal Bar Association and the DPP.” She insisted her ministry “has no interest to safeguard by suggesting that people plead guilty.” Moore said the false information published in the media was “offensive.” She recalled that as a former criminal attorney she defended people who were accused. According to Moore, the claim that she told prisoners to plead guilty “was completely out of character.”
She also denied inmates were engaged in hunger strikes in the prisons. She said there were inmates who were protesting by not eating food served by the prison authorities but those inmates were consuming food from relatives. Moore said some inmates had voiced their dissatisfaction at the prison by refusing to eat meals served by the authorities. She said there will always be dissent at prisons. The minister said she was more concerned with managing the problem, “not to necessarily quell the dissent. People have a right to be unhappy and they have a right to express it within certain finite boundaries.” She said it was “not a matter of addressing the concern as opposed to keeping the situation from becoming volatile and keeping prison officers safe. To me that is the priority.”