By Nakinskie Robinson
A wave of sickness appears to have swept across two adult correctional centres, with several inmates reportedly affected.
Radio Jamaica News has learnt that inmates at the Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre in Kingston and the St. Catherine Adult Correctional Centre in Spanish Town have been exhibiting flu-like symptoms and vomiting.
It is not yet clear the precise nature of the illness, it's origin, the extent of the outbreak and how many inmates are affected across the two facilities.
But the Independent Commission of Investigations is probing the death of an inmate from the Spanish Town based facility.
The prisoner, who has not yet been named, was rushed to hospital on Tuesday morning, where he was pronounced dead.
The authorities have not disclosed the cause of death but a Radio Jamaica News source says it is linked to the apparent outbreak of illness.
For years, several human rights advocacy groups have decried the poor conditions of prisons, where a defining feature is overcrowding.
They have argued that conditions are unfit for human habitation.
Both maximum security facilities are meant to each house an estimated 700 inmates, however, roughly 1,700 inmates are at Tower Street and some 1,000 at the St. Catherine facility.
This represents about 70 per cent of the overall prisoner count of 3,700, across the 10 facilities in the country.
Other lobby groups, including Jamaicans for Justice, have called for improvements to infrastructure as well as the quantity and nutritional value of meals served to inmates.
National Security Minister Dr. Horace Chang in March said priority would be given to building two new facilities that will house inmates from the run down prisons.
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