Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1997. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia, Inc. - Friday August 22 4:45 PM EDT
Michael Becker

Police said two inmates were stabbed and burned to death Friday even as jail guards returned to work at the island's two major prisons following a strike touched off by the condom proposal, which guards said implied they were homosexuals.

Commissioner of Corrections John Prescod, whose comments in a radio interview Tuesday started the trouble, agreed to hand over his duties to a deputy amid calls for his ouster.

Police went cell-to-cell in the prisons Friday, questioning inmates about the slayings and confiscating weapons as soldiers manned guard posts.

Prescod's proposal to issue condoms to prison inmates and guards as a means of controlling the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, touched off the storm at the Kingston General Penitentiary and St. Catherine District Prison in Spanish Town, west of Kingston.

Two inmates were killed Wednesday at the Kingston jail. On Thursday, inmates at the maximum security St. Catherine prison attacked supervisors, setting fire to a cell block. One inmate was deliberately burned to death and another died of stab wounds, police said.

Early Friday, renewed violence at the Kingston General Penitentiary brought the toll to six dead and 20 injured.

All of those who were attacked were accused by fellow inmates of being homosexuals, police said.

Homosexuality is heavily stigmatized in Jamaica, as in many Caribbean and Latin American countries.

Rioting began Wednesday when prison guards walked off the job. Their union leaders said Prescod's proposal had implied the guards were homosexuals.

His comments had "poured buckets of dung over the officers and (Prescod) is incapable of scrubbing that off," said Reg Ennis, president of the Union of Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Personnel.

Following a meeting between government officials and the guards' unions late Thursday, Prescod issued a statement in which he expressed regret for "any embarrassment which may have been caused to the warders, inmates and their families."

"It was never intended to convey the impression that warders and or inmates are engaged in homosexual activity," he said.

The guards returned to their posts Friday after the government agreed to establish a committee to deal with the outstanding issues, including a call from the guards for Prescod's resignation.

Prescod gave up daily administration of the prisons to a deputy temporarily while he works on the committee, a Ministry of National Security and Justice statement said.

"Owing to the necessary and time-consuming nature of this task, in which the commissioner will be actively involved, the deputy commissioner will undertake the day-to-day function of the department for the next two weeks," the statement said.

Dr. Peter Figueroa, head of the Health Ministry's unit that monitors sexually transmitted diseases, expressed disappointment that the pact sending guards back to work barred condom distribution in prisons.

He said the incidence of sexual activity and the resulting spread of diseases in Jamaica's prisons was well-documented.

"I think we need a cooling down period," Figueroa said in a radio interview.

Prescod said fewer than 100 prisoners were known to have HIV in a prison population of more than 3,500. A mandatory testing program for inmates ended two years ago because of a lack of funds.

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