ST. GEORGE'S, Grenada - A lawyer for four Rastafarian inmates who want to stop prison officials in Grenada from cutting their dreadlocks presented closing arguments Thursday 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 Briton Lawrence Keith Prentice, 38, who did not give his hometown but is serving a sentence for a drug possession conviction.
The other men are Solomon Charles, 34, of Grenada, who is serving a sentence for assault, and David Leidlow, 43, and Evan Laborde, 29 — both of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and serving time for drug offenses.
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, Ruggles Ferguson 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 Thursday, carrying flags and scarves of red, green and yellow with the symbols of the lion and the late Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I, whom they consider the black Messiah.
They sat quietly in court as the case was presented, and said their presence was a show of support for the four men.
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.
Lawyers are to finish their arguments June 21, after which Judge Kenneth Benjamin is expected to make a ruling. The case began June 3.