The drama of deportation
By Professor Ivelaw Griffith
IN A July 1993 speech to the Jamaican Parliament as part of the parliamentary budget debate, National Security Minister K.D Knight stated: "Nearly a thousand Jamaicans were deported from other countries last year, with over 700 coming from the United States. Most of them, nearly 600, were deported for drug-related offences". Indeed, between 1993 and 1997, over 6,000 Jamaican deportees were returned to this island from countries in Europe and the Americas. According to law enforcement sources in Jamaica, while the number returned in 1993 was 923, in 1996 it was 1,158 and in 1997 it was 1,647. Most of the deportees come from the United States. But the United States is not the only country that sends Caribbean criminals back to their homelands. For example, of the 1,647 people returned to Jamaica in 1997, 1,213 were from the United States, 257 were from Canada, and 121 were from the United Kingdom. Of course, Jamaica is not the only Caribbean nation to be forced to accept diaspora nationals who have walked on the wrong side of the law. As a matter of fact, Jamaica is not the country to which most deportees are returned. That dubious distinction falls to the Dominican Republic. United States immigration sources indicate that between 1993 and 1997, deportees from the United States alone numbered 6,582 (while those sent to Jamaica from the United States during the same period numbered under 5,000). The population of the Dominican Republic and Jamaica and the size of their diaspora make it understandable that they might have such huge numbers of their citizens returned from countries in Europe and the Americas. But the stark contrast between the numbers from those two nations and the numbers elsewhere is no consolation to policy makers or scholars in any of the countries involved. Some of the countries are: Aruba 10, Bahamas 265, Belize 374, Dominica 57, Guyana 427, St Lucia 52, Trinidad and Tobago 1,036. Needless to say, these are not the only Caribbean countries with deportees from the United States, or from elsewhere. For example, Suriname and French Guiana frequently return people to Guyana, and the Cayman Islands is constantly deporting Jamaicans. Deportees are returned to their place of birth because of the committal of a variety of consensual, property, and expressive crimes. However, most of them are sent back home because of criminal activities related to drugs. The increasing criminal deportation reflects aggressiveness on the part of the United States and other countries in attempting to cope with some of the political, economic, and criminal justice dimensions of the drug phenomenon. If nothing else, the deportee-drugs connection clearly indicates that the narcotics phenomenon is not a one-dimensional matter, it is a multinational one. Geonarcotics concept In a 1993-1994 article in International Journal, Canada's leading foreign affairs journal, I proposed the concept of "geonarcotics" as a way to examine the nexus between drugs as social phenomenon and security studies as an intellectual issue-area. The concept captures the dynamics of three factors besides drugs: geography, power, and politics. It posits: first, that the narcotics phenomenon is multidimensional - with four main problem areas (drug production, consumption-abuse, trafficking, and money-laundering); second, that these give rise to actual and potential threats - including crime, arms trafficking, and narcoterrorism - to the security of states around the world; and third, that the drug operations and the activities they spawn precipitate both conflict and cooperation among various state and non-actors in the international system. Let us consider the significance of these three dynamics as they relate to drug use and deportation. Geography is a factor because of the global spatial dispersion of drug operations, and because certain physical and social geographic features of numerous countries facilitate drug operations. For example, power involves the ability of individuals and groups to secure compliant action. In the drug world, this power is both state and non-state in origin, and in some cases non-state sources exercise more power than state entities. Politics revolves around resource allocation in the ability of power brokers to determine who gets what, how and when. Since power in this millieu is not only state power, resource allocation is correspondingly not exclusively a function of state power-holders. In `Drugs and Security the in the Caribbean: Sovereignty Under Siege', I examine the geonarcotics of the Caribbean. Among other things, the deportee issue reveals some of the multiple dynamics of power, politics, resource allocation, and conflict and cooperation between the United States and the Caribbean relative to the drugs phenomenon. Deportations from the United States, for example, is a reflection of several issues: 1. Get-tough anti-drug efforts by the Federal and most state governments. 2. New legislation and congressional oversight on immigration. 3. Increased resource allocation to the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS), especially the Detention and Deportation Division. 4. Significant restrictions on discretionary relief from deportation with the result that most foreign nationals convicted of felonies in the United States are ineligible for relief, regardless of their length of residence or ties to the community. 5. Congressional initiatives on "administrative removal" procedures, allowing the deportation of aggravated felons who are not lawful permanent residents without full hearings and with limited judicial review of immigration court decisions. 6. Early release programmes in several states including Florida, New York and Connecticut - which target foreign-born inmates for clemency (which is rarely done) or early parole in exchange for immediate deportation. This helps prison overcrowding and the cost of prison maintenance. Clear and present dangers While criminal deportation has many benefits in terms of counter-drug and anti-crime strategies generally, and economic and criminal justice measures, specifically, for sending countries, it presents several clear and present dangers to receiving countries. One significant danger is escalation in local crime. Government officials throughout the Caribbean have complained that deportees tend to become involved locally in trafficking and other criminal networks. Jamaica's 1995 Economic and Social Survey noted, for instance, that deportees are heavily involved in crime, "particularly the importation and use of firearms, the drug trade, and money laundering." I noted earlier that the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and the other larger nations are not the only ones facing deportee problems. Eastern Caribbean countries who have smaller populations, hence smaller migrant populations - experience far less deportees who have been in involved in drug crimes. However, because of their small size, the deportees reintroduce a criminal element which has had a dramatic and traumatic effect on them. Not only is the problem taxing the resources of the Eastern Caribbean and other countries, but as one law enforcement official told me, many of the deportees are former servicemen of the United States army or marines, and they bring their military training and knowledge of weapons and military hardware to their criminal enterprise, creating both a greater sense of apprehension by law enforcement officials and a bigger logistical headache for them. According to him, "they leave our islands as high school criminals and are returned to us as post-graduate criminals". In one May 1997 case in Guyana, a bungled burglary and shooting incident at the residence of the former Chairman of the Elections Commission, Rudy Collins, involved the use of laser-guided weapons by the would-be robbers, all five of whom were killed in a shoot-out with police; several of the bandits had been deportees. The situation is so grave that new legislation has been adopted in some places to allow the police to monitor the movement of deportees and take preemptive action. Moreover, the deportees issue has been high on the agenda of several policy forums over recent years, including the special `Drug Summit' held by Caricom (Caribbean Community) leaders in December 1996. Item 5 of the communique of that summit, which was held in Barbados, notes: "Heads of Government noted with equal concern the challenge facing the region from indiscriminate deportations leading to increased criminality. In this regard they called for greater cooperation in deportation procedures." As a consequence of the increased crime, and serving to further aggravate the criminal justice situation, is the problem of prison overcrowding. Most Caribbean prisons are overcrowded, and in most cases the prisoners are there because of a variety of drug-related offences. In the Dominican Republic, for instance, a 1996 survey done by the General Directorate of Prisons revealed that the people convicted of drug crimes constituted the single largest group of prisoners in the country - 30 per cent of the 10,359 prisoners at the same time of the study. In Guyana, a former prison director, Cecil Kilkenny, once indicated that the Georgetown prison, which was built to house 350 prisoners, was forced to accommodate over 800 people in 1994, and had accommodated as many as 1,000 prisoners during early 1992 Significant overcrowding in prisons The Georgetown prison now has a higher official capacity - 510, but significant overcrowding still exists there and in most of the other prisons in Guyana. In Jamaica the total inmate population of the adult prisons in December 1991 was 3,705, about 33 per cent above the official capacity of 2,781. Minister K.D Knight himself acknowledged in 1993 that, "The overcrowding in our two maximum security correctional institutions, the General Penitentiary and the St Catherine District Prison, is serious, and has triggered serious problems over the years. Each of these prisons contains about twice as many inmates as they were designed to hold." In 1994 the average was "only" 611, in 1995 it was "merely" 508. A 1993 inquiry into the situation in Jamaica highlighted the appalling conditions of Jamaican prisons. It was led by Justice Lensley Wolfe, who is now Chief Justice of Jamaica. The Wolfe report found that prisoners were required to eat with their hands for security reasons, a situation it deemed "inhuman and degrading treatment". Meals were found to be generally "revolting in appearance and taste". In some places, "the diet fed to the cell occupants should be consumed only by pigs." The Wolfe investigation found that prison indiscipline abounded, and that all sorts of malfeasance and abuse occurred in Jamaican prisons. A few reforms were implemented since the presentation of the Wolfe report, but the situation is still very grave. No wonder, then, that several serious prison riots broke out in Jamaican prisons in 1997. This is not to suggest, through, that overcrowding and the horrible conditions alone contributed to the riots. In the case of Trinidad and Tobago, most of the country's six penal institutions house three and four times the number of people for which they were intended. The Port of Spain prison, for instance, built in 1812 to accommodate 250 inmates, had a 1993 daily average inmate population of 978, up from the 1992 figure of 916. That prison housed an average of 1,100 people during 1994, and a little less in 1995. The serious overcrowding presents several critical problems: 1. The provision of medical services, especially given the high incidence of prisoner-addiction. 2. The maintenance of discipline, particularly because of increased gang and other violence in prison. 3. The physical safety of prison officers. 4. The provision of recreational facilities, among other considerations. The deplorable conditions of prisons in Trinidad and Tobago were highlighted in July 1998 when a judge blocked the execution of a death row inmate on grounds that he had already been subjected to cruel and inhuman punishment during his imprisonment over the years his trial worked its way back and forth in the criminal justice system. Justice Peter Jamadar noted that the convict - Darrin Thomas - had been forced to live with insufficient light, was handcuffed during breaks, and given inadequate food, among other injustices. The action by Justice Jamadar in offering this response to the prison conditions itself raises larger questions of criminal justice fairness and equity in Trinidad, questions that certainly are applicable to other countries in the region. Imposing crisis The deportee headache sours both inter-state/foreign policy and intra-state/domestic policy considerations. Caribbean nations have attempted and initiated actions at both the international and domestic levels to deal with this imposing crisis. In the area of inter-state/foreign policy, they have attempted individually and collectively to stem the tide of the return from the United States and Canada. In the case of the United States, the matter was a high priority item on the agenda of the summit between President Bill Clinton and the 15 Caribbean leaders which was held in Barbados in May 1997. Efforts by the Caribbean leaders to halt the practice were futile, but the participants agreed to streamline the management of the deportees. Section 9 of the Plan of Action, one of two main summit documents, outlines the intended actions: "We recongnise the right of each state to determine its policies on deportations subject to international law, and agree to: 9.3 provide adequate advance notice to designated authorities prior to a criminal's deportation; 9.4 provide appropriate information regarding the persons to be deported; 9.5 establish, prior to the deportation, that the deportee is a national of the receiving state; 9.6 hold consultations on other issues associated with deportation; and 9.7 work to improve arrangements by which the deportee has access to his or her assets located in the sending country. We note that the United States intends to offer technical assistance in establishing parole and monitoring systems." Implementation of some of the terms of the United States-Caribbean agreement on deportee management, as well as on other issues, has begun. But while these are necessary, they are not sufficient. Other action within Caribbean countries in a variety of areas is also important. And some of this action has been initiated. One response has been with legislation. In 1994 Jamaica adopted the criminal Justice (Administration) (Amendment) Act. This law provides for deportees to be deemed restricted persons, and under Section 54C restricted persons are subjected to the imposition of orders, for up to 12 months at a time, to restrict their residence, force their registration, and compel them to report to police authorities on a weekly basis. They are also required to inform the police about the intended absences from the registered address when the absence is for more than a week, and about any planned change of address. Moreover, the new law provides for a central register of restricted persons as well as for twelve-month prison terms for violation of monitoring provisions or for false reporting. The Act also creates a five-member Restricted Persons Review Tribunal to hear appeals from persons placed under restriction, and to advise the government on the maintenance of the system. Guyana plans to emulate Jamaica's legislative lead in this respect. This intention had already been disclosed by the government, but it was restated in June 1997 by Dr Roger Luncheon, Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Presidential Secretariat, at a press conference in Georgetown. The Criminal Justice (Administration) (Amendment) Act, however, has serious implications for constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms of association and movement. The Government has argued that its actions are constitutional given the "exception clauses" of the fundamental rights of sections of the constitution. For example, under Section 23 of the constitution, which guarantees freedoms of assembly and association, there is the provision that: "Nothing contained in or done under the authority of any law shall be held to be inconsistent with or in contravention of this section to the extent that the law in question makes provision: a. which is reasonably required (i) in the interest of defence, public safety, public order, public morality, or public health, or (ii) for the purpose of protecting the rights and freedoms of other persons." Nevertheless, Jamaica's chief prosecutor once speculated that the law's constitutionality would been challenged with the very first case brought under it because of the delicate constitutional issues involved. Some of these same issues worry lawyers and human rights activists in Guyana, where the authorities there plan to follow Jamaica's lead. Precarious position One unintended consequence of the deportee drama is the deflection of attention and energy by Caribbean governments from efforts to harness and utilise the resources of the Caribbean diaspora. It needs to be emphasised that the clear and present dangers of the criminal deportees notwithstanding, the deportees do not constitute the diaspora. Caribbean nationals abroad are not all criminals, and the attention to dealing with the return of those who break foreign laws should not be allowed to undermine efforts to embrace the law-abiding ones. The deportee drama places Caribbean governments in a very precarious position: they face the realities of other nations' - including some Caribbean nations' - anti-drug efforts, which they endorse in principle, but they also face the necessity to honour obligations of statehood for people in the diaspora who have violated laws elsewhere. But it should also be remembered that the lawful and productive members of the diaspora constitute a potential political, economic, and foreign policy `rock' which Caribbean governments can use to help cope with the global economic `hard place' in which Caribbean countries find themselves. (Guyanese-born Professor Griffith is Associate Dean at Florida International University. This article was first published in `Caribbean Perspectives', January 1999.)
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