InterPress News Service (IPS); Friday, 22 August 1997.

When John Prescod, Commissioner of Corrections put that proposal on the table recently, he probably did not bargain for the chain of events that it would have set off.

The prison warders took strike action. Some of the inmates backed them and went on hunger strike. Riots broke out which up to Friday had left six inmates dead and 21 nursing injuries.

Those who have been killed by their fellow inmates were all accused of being homosexuals.

The disturbances which started on Wednesday have been concentrated in the General Penitentiary in Kingston and the District Prison in St. Catherine, the parish adjoining Kingston.

A search of the prisons uncovered razor blades, pieces of sharpened steel, improvised knives and broken bottles.

It all began when the warders interpreted Prescod's action to mean that they were having homosexual relationships with the inmates. They also accused Prescod of promoting homosexuality in the prisons.

The warders and prisoners were not the only ones who thought Prescod had made a wrong move.

"If buggery is taking place in the prisons then certainly to solve the problem cannot be to issue condoms. How can the commissioner take up on himself to issue condoms to facilitate buggery in the prisons. Buggery is a criminal offence," says talk show host, Wilmot Perkins.

But, says Prescod, his call for condoms to be distributed to warders and prisoners was just a part of a larger programme intended to encourage safe sex in general.

In the last three months 117 persons have been diagnosed with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) here. The total number of cases which have been reported since the disease first came to light here in the early 1980s now stands at 2,301. Of this figure 1,265 have died -- 805 men and 465 women.

According to the Ministry of Health, persons in the high risk group include those having multple sex partners, those who engage in casual sexual relations and persons who have other sexually transmitted diseases.

Recent studies have shown that 25 percent of women attending Family Planning Clinics have been diagnosed with one of the four main STDs --Gonorrhoea, Chlamydia, Trichomonias or Syphilis.

Meanwhile, this is not the first time that the suggestion that condoms be distributed on a wide scale to an institution has sparked controversy, although not on sucha violent scale.

In 1995 a proposal by family planners that condoms should be distributed in schools was frowned on by parents and school teachers who argued that when the students had the contraceptive in hand it would be easier for them to become involved in sexual activities.

The idea of introducing condoms in schools was put forward at that time when a study showed that many youngsters were becoming sexually active at an early age.

The study, commissioned by the National Family Planning Board showed that while in 1987, 41 percent of girls between the ages of 15 and 17 were sexually active, by 1993 that figure stood at 44 percent.

Among the boys the figure in 1987 was 70 percent and in 1983 it was 83 percent.

Meanwhile, Prescod has said that among a population of 100 inmates 85 percent was found to have contracted the AIDS virus. He says that mandatory testing for prisoners for HIV when they entered the prison system ended two years ago because of the cost of the process. (end/ips/pr/cb/97)

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