UK to Build $38 Million Jamaican Prison, Won't Pay Reparations

In his visit to Jamaica, Prime Minister David Cameron announced a 25 million pounds (US$37.8 million) project to build a massive prison on the island in order to transfer UK-based Jamaican nationals there, BBC reported Tuesday.

The deal between the two countries was made in order to transfer a reported 600 Jamaican foreign nationals detained in UK prisons. Britain has allegedly refrained from deporting them because of fear conditions in Jamaican jails violate human rights law.

"It is absolutely right that foreign criminals who break our laws are properly punished but this shouldn't be at the expense of the hard-working British taxpayer," Cameron said, according to BBC.

"That's why this agreement is so important. It will mean Jamaican criminals are sent back home to serve their sentences, saving the British taxpayer millions of pounds but still ensuring justice is done,” he added. 

The announcement comes as a prominent Jamaican academic called on the United Kingdom to pay slavery reparations on Monday, ahead of Prime Minister David Cameron's visit to the island nation.

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In an open letter published by the Jamaica Observer, Beckles argued the “legacies of slavery … continue to derail, undermine and haunt our best efforts at sustainable economic development and the psychological and cultural rehabilitation of our people from the ravishes of the crimes against humanity committed by your British State and its citizens in the form of chattel slavery and native genocide.”

The academic called on Cameron to acknowledge the U.K.'s history of colonialism in the Caribbean, and said London now has to “play its part in cleaning up this monumental mess of empire.”

He added, “We ask not for handouts or any such acts of indecent submission. We merely ask that you acknowledge responsibility for your share of this situation and move to contribute in a joint program of rehabilitation and renewal.”

Cameron's visit to Jamaica and Grenada this week is expected to focus on trade relations, and the prime minister has previously expressed disapproval for any slavery reparations. “I don't actually think that one generation can meaningfully apologize for something that a previous generation did,” he said in 2007.

Jamaica became one of the centers of the international slave trade in the 17th Century, with the British relying heavily on slave labor to develop the island's sugar industry. By the time the slave trade was abolished in the early 19th Century, slaves in Jamaica outnumbered free settlers by close to 20 to one, and many plantations were rife with abuses.