Outcomes - Selected Case Summaries
Categories
Health Risk at Prison
Early Resolution | 21 November 2019
Her Majesty's Cayman Islands Prison Service (HMPS)
The wife of an inmate at HMPS complained that her husband, who had a very serious lung condition, was placed in a cell in the smoking area of the prison. She tried several times over a one-week period to speak with prison officers in person to stress the seriousness of her husband’s health condition and ask that he be transferred to a non-smoking cell. The prisoner ended up spending a night in the hospital because of breathing difficulties. His wife came to us because she was concerned that her husband would be returned to a cell in the smoking zone.
Our office is an office of last resort which means that we only accept complaints after the internal complaints process (ICP) has been completed. In this case, the ICP had not been completed so we recommended that the wife contact the Deputy Director of the prison and that she copy our office in her email stating her concerns. She called us the following morning to report that she received an immediate response from the prison advising her that her husband would be transferred to the non-smoking zone.