JDF veteran Brigadier Radgh Mason is new prison boss 

Brigadier Radgh Mason from the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) is to take over as the head of Jamaica's prison service on April 2. 

As commissioner of corrections, he will head the Department of Correctional Services (DCS). 

He confirmed the appointment on Thursday. 

Mason will replace Dr Marc Thomas, a senior official at the department, who was acting in the role following the retirement of Lieutenant Colonel (retired) Gary Rowe, who served from April 2019 to May 2023. 

Mason, a brigade commander, is a former president of the Caribbean Military Academy, the army's tertiary-training institution based at Up Park Camp. 

He has been a member of the JDF for 33 years. 

The DCS oversees adult and juvenile correctional facilities as well as remand centres. 

Up to January, the DCS reported 3,700 inmates spread across 10 facilities. 

Mason comes to the position amid longstanding concerns about the quality of rehabilitation and the poor conditions of prisons. Calls remain for a modern maximum security facility that the Government says it is pursuing. 

In February, The Sunday Gleaner revealed that months after sections of the Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre in Kingston were declared an “immediate danger to inmates and staff”, prisoners were still being housed in the compromised areas.

The Ministry of National Security said it has been trying to reduce the population in the problem areas at the maximum security prison but “we have limited space for high-risk inmates so there are logistical and security challenges in relocating them”.

Mason will also face agitated correctional officers who have expressed concerns about their proposed compensation from the finance ministry.

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