Human Rights Watch visited five working police lockups in Jamaica in late August to early September 1998 and interviewed more than thirty children about their experiences in the lockups. There are no exercise facilities. The children receive no education at all and have reading materials only if books are brought in by family members. Every day in Jamaica, children as young as ten are locked in dark, overcrowded, vermin-infested cells, where they are physically and mentally abused by both the police and other inmates.
Some children stay for only days, others remain in detention for weeks and months.
Although the lockups have been publicly denounced as unfit, they remain in use for children awaiting the determination of their fate. This report concerns the application of the death penalty, the conditions in prisons and lockups, and police violence, including acts of coercion to obtain evidence that amount to torture and the excessive use of deadly force.