The prison population is getting younger every day, and even schoolchildren are committing some of the most heinous crimes imaginable, inclusive of physical attacks, oftentimes leading to murder. This newspaper, just yesterday, reported on an incident where a 16-year-old student was knifed to death by a 17-year-old school dropout during a concert at the Covent Garden Secondary School on the East Bank of Demerara. Unless this scourge is addressed with alacrity by the authorities, then one can visualise the ensuing horror that will catalyse this country into a conflagration of crime, which is already spiralling out of control.
With the extant rapidity of deceleration of the economy and punitive fiscal policies of the coalition Government, redundancies and skyrocketing unemployment, the consequences are beyond disastrous, with spending power constrained to bare essentials, where even the quality of nutritional intake is severely compromised.
Teenagers, who had become accustomed to the latest electronic gadgetry and brand-name apparel, are generally no longer being afforded these luxuries with the contraction of the real fiscal power of the family income.
Most of these young people who have been inculcated with a moral compass and consequently adhere to discipline will adjust accordingly, but it is the youths who have no guiding force or role model pointing them in the right direction who will most likely, as is already happening, find it preferable to pick up a weapon and try to extract quick riches from the unwary, even if they have to kill to obtain the spoils of their forays into criminality.
Very soon they become hardened criminals who have no compunction for their actions and often display no compassion for their victims, indiscriminately depriving them of their property, money, and lives without thinking of the devastation they wreak on the families, especially vulnerable dependents, such as elderly parents and children.
They perfect the art of escape after the execution of their crimes, so oftentimes when they are caught after a long career of theft and murder they are treated as ‘first-time offenders’, figuratively rapped on the knuckles by bleeding hearts Judges and Magistrates and sent to prey on society once again, with scant or no punishment.
Imprisonment, especially with hard labour, is meant to act as a deterrent to engagement in criminal activities in civil societies, and this should ideally work concurrently with rehabilitation to integrate prisoners into families, communities, and the general society at large. It is the general consensus that prisoners should be treated humanely. They were caught committing their crimes, while many criminals who have been getting away without discovery – including those leaders in the trade unions and political parties who have devised schemes to destroy public and private properties, among other anti-social activities, are enjoying their freedom and the largesse to be had from the Government’s various developmental programmes.
In this regard, kudos are in order for retired Director of Prisons, Dale Erskine, who – during his tenure – created synergies to make the prison system more aligned to rehabilitation rather than punishment; and he was open to ideas.
Appalled at the treatment of prisoners – as though they were animals rather than people caught in unfortunate circumstances, Erskine incorporated new programmes in the prison system to create a dynamic whereby prison was no longer somewhere merely to lock away people found guilty of aberrant behaviour, but where the inmates could be guided, directed, and encouraged to change their thinking and attitude into more positive, achievement-oriented directions. That change was a work in progress throughout Erskine’s tenure as initially Officer-in-Charge of the Georgetown Prison, and then Director of Prisons.
The changes wrought by the forward, humanistic thinking of Dale Erskine were multi-faceted and transformational; and he did all these things with a quiet simplicity and understated leadership that would benefit prisoners for generations to come.
One of the programmes he set in motion was the identification and employment of a skilled bank of prisoners who were at least risk of escaping or engaging in additional criminal activities; and this has proven to be a success over the years.
The prisoners are thus enabled to earn an income, part of which provides for his/her own needs; the needs of relatives, including young children left defenceless as their mothers struggle to take care of their prerequisites for survival; and some saved for their own upkeep upon their release, because the world knows that for a person with a prison record finding employment is a difficult feat.
However, there are those who are considered beyond human redemption, because they have become so hardened in their hearts that opportunities for atonement and salvation are wasted on them and society is better served by locking them up for the longest possible time and, upon their release, keeping them under secret surveillance until the protective services are completely assured of their restored sense of right and wrong, and their intention to continue to adhere to the laws of the land.
