There are as­pects of the de­ten­tion of busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife, Genevieve, that ex­pose a long­stand­ing and deeply trou­bling re­al­i­ty with­in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem—one that de­mands con­tin­ued scruti­ny and pub­lic ex­po­sure.

As re­port­ed in the Sun­day Guardian, Se­nior Coun­sel Faris Al-Rawi, in an af­fi­davit on be­half of Mrs Hadeed, de­scribed con­di­tions at the Wood­brook Po­lice Sta­tion that are de­grad­ing by any stan­dard. She was said to be held in a cramped cell mea­sur­ing eight by six feet, with a dirty ter­raz­zo floor, no bed­ding or fur­ni­ture and on­ly a hole in the ground serv­ing as a toi­let, with­out run­ning wa­ter. The cell re­port­ed­ly reeks of urine, is in­fest­ed with cock­roach­es and lacks prop­er ven­ti­la­tion. An­oth­er fe­male oc­cu­pant was said to be curled up on the floor in the fe­tal po­si­tion.

Mr Hadeed’s re­port­ed sit­u­a­tion at the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion is equal­ly con­cern­ing. He was al­leged­ly forced to sleep on a bare floor and de­prived of elec­tric­i­ty need­ed to op­er­ate a med­ical de­vice re­quired for his sleep ap­nea—rais­ing se­ri­ous ques­tions about his health and the State’s du­ty of care.

No rea­son­able per­son ex­pects ho­tel-like com­fort for in­di­vid­u­als in cus­tody. How­ev­er, the con­di­tions de­scribed are far re­moved from what may be con­sid­ered min­i­mal­ly ac­cept­able in any civilised so­ci­ety. They are in­hu­mane.

If such con­di­tions are in­de­fen­si­ble for in­di­vid­u­als in tem­po­rary de­ten­tion, they are even more alarm­ing when placed in the con­text of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s wider prison sys­tem. For decades, over­crowd­ing, un­san­i­tary en­vi­ron­ments and sys­temic ne­glect have been doc­u­ment­ed and ex­am­ined, with lit­tle last­ing re­form. The suf­fer­ing of those sub­ject­ed to these con­di­tions must be high­light­ed at every op­por­tu­ni­ty, not on­ly when high-pro­file de­tainees are in­volved.

It must al­so be not­ed that Mr Hadeed’s at­tor­ney, Al-Rawi, served for many years as at­tor­ney gen­er­al. Dur­ing that time, he would have been aware of the state of po­lice de­ten­tion fa­cil­i­ties and pris­ons, and the ur­gent need for re­form and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the fa­cil­i­ties. Yet, suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions have failed to mean­ing­ful­ly ad­dress these de­fi­cien­cies, al­low­ing such con­di­tions to per­sist to the detri­ment of thou­sands, par­tic­u­lar­ly young de­tainees await­ing tri­al.

Some may ar­gue that con­cern is be­ing am­pli­fied on­ly be­cause the in­di­vid­u­als in­volved are of so­cial and eco­nom­ic stand­ing. That crit­i­cism, how­ev­er, would be mis­placed. The in­hu­mane con­di­tions of de­ten­tion have long been a mat­ter of pub­lic record and re­peat­ed me­dia scruti­ny.

The con­se­quences of ne­glect­ing prison re­form ex­tend well be­yond de­ten­tion walls. As nu­mer­ous stud­ies have shown, in­di­vid­u­als sub­ject­ed to de­grad­ing con­di­tions of­ten emerge more hard­ened and alien­at­ed, per­pet­u­at­ing cy­cles of crim­i­nal­i­ty rather than break­ing them.

Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion must be a cen­tral pil­lar of the jus­tice sys­tem. To ig­nore the dig­ni­ty of those in cus­tody is not on­ly un­just—it is coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. The con­di­tions de­scribed in this case should not mere­ly pro­voke out­rage. They must com­pel ur­gent and sus­tained re­form.