Incarcerated dancehall artiste Shawn Storm shared a heartbreaking reel via his Instagram account that showed the stark reality of the squalid living conditions of prison life in the General Penitentiary.
The post was captioned: “God nah mek mi spend a next year Ina Dem place yah” #Kingstonice #FreedomStreet #FreeVybzKartel #FreeShawnStorm.
With a song called ‘Kingston Ice’ playing in the background, Shawn Storm waxed eloquently in the outro about the “rushed judgements” handed down by the Jamaican court system.
“Dem just rush case, judge case and send man come a prison,” Shawn Storm intoned over a melancholy dancehall beat.
“That’s Jamaica system, dem don’t give a (expletive deleted) about us so why we fi give a (expletive deleted) about them?”.
The video offered a sobering glimpse into the living conditions behind the prison walls in the government’s penal system. The video panned to show a single cell, which featured two concrete bunks, one upper and one lower, on either side of the tiny dungeon.
Neither bunk had a mattress, and there was a grungy-looking toilet located dead centre between the ‘bunks’. The video then panned outside the cell to show the reinforced steel doors and dirty concrete floors.
It was a stark and forbidding look at the grimy underbelly of the local prison system. The General Penitentiary is almost 180 years old. In 1845, the British colonial government commissioned the facility into a prison.
Shawn Storm has been incarcerated for almost 13 years.
The My Life artiste will be eligible for parole after serving some 22 and half years in lock up, while co-accused Vybz Kartel will gain eligibility for parole after serving 32 and a half years in custody.The two other co-accused, Kahira Jones, and Andre St. John must serve 22 years and six months and 27 years and six months respectively before they are eligible for parole.
The lawyers representing the men stated that they will be taking the matter to the United Kingdom-based Privy Council, which is Jamaica’s final appellate court.
Entertainers Vybz Kartel and Shawn Storm, along with the two other abovementioned men were convicted in 2014 for the 2011 murder of Clive “Lizard” Williams.
