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| Rastafarian Inmates Fight Grenada Prison Officials Who Want to Cut Their Dreadlocks |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 07/01/2002 |
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A lawyer for four Rastafarian inmates who want to stop prison officials in Grenada from cutting their dreadlocks presented closing arguments recently before the High Court. The men say keeping their locks is an important part of their religion and cutting them would violate their constitutional rights. 'I have been wearing my dreadlocks from the age of 16,' said Lawrence Keith Prentice, 38, who did not give his hometown but is serving a sentence for a drug possession conviction. Prison officials argue the dreadlocks must be cut to prevent disease and smuggling weapons and contraband into the prison. 'It is all speculation that if the men wear dreadlocks, they have lice and other vermin, or they will transmit disease or that they are a security risk,' the men's attorney said. 'You see them before you here today - neat locks, clean locks, well kept locks.' Hugh Wildman, the lawyer for the government, said Grenada's constitution gives the prison 'discretion to cut the hair of male prisoners,' and said the regulations protect public health. Ruggles called the prison regulations discriminatory because they don't require female prisoners to have their hair cut. Wildman explained to the court that women were exempt from the law because 'it is a notorious fact that to cut a woman's hair without her consent could have traumatic and devastating consequences.' More than 20 members of the local Rastafarian community were in the court. Rastafarianism's many sects worship the late Selassie. The religion emerged in Jamaica and spread throughout the Caribbean in the 1930s, fueled in part by the anger felt by descendants of slaves and imbalances left from a legacy of colonial oppression. Adherents are often noted for their dreadlocks, tams and the use of marijuana, which followers believe aids in meditation. |
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