It's A Serious Situation Now!!

By Kerwin De Matas

Senior Supt in charge of programmes Joseph Narsiah, left, chats with head of the prison welfare department Gordon Husbands, centre, and Prison Officer 2 Rudolph Garcia at the Maximum Security Prison, Golden Grove, Arouca, last week .


TWO MONTHS ago inmates at the Golden Grove Remand Prison set fire to newspapers and destroyed electrical fixtures during a protest in response to a search by prison guards. Sunday, October 29Th 2006. www.TrinidadExpress.com


So I wasn't too far from the mark, was I? My article on the 18Th of September, " Who's Responsible?...", was touching the same issues concerning people condemned to do time in our jails, and having next to nothing in education. This was an article done by a reporter linked to the Trinidad Express, describing the frustrations of inmates trapped inside of themselves, with little capabilities of expressing properly because of the lack of a proper education, hmm..

Check This Book Out

I'm sorry, but I would say that all of that is simply bullshit! If these same inmates, when they were in the free world, if they were so concerned of their lack of an education, then why didn't they take the time to get one? Instead, they took it upon themselves, to go about idly doing crap in the streets, hurting, other people, including themselves. Yes I am sympathetic towards some inmates, because of the shit most of them had to go through in their lives. But I also believe that each of us should try very hard in exercising responsibility, when it concerns our future. I fully understand the environment a lot of these guys grew up in, the attacks they got from society because of where they came from.

This Should Be A #1 Priority In Prisons!

I think one would have to have nerves of steel to overcome all those barriers, and to build their own self esteem, because after all, there was no one to help with those issues. But definitely, something more is going on, maybe it is all the foreign influence coming to the island in the form of media or nationals returning with new found knowledge of what I would describe as " Hip Hop " style crimes. Of course, here we have only a small portion of the problem. Already, Trinidad and Tobago has a lot of young people neglecting their studies, voluntarily and involuntarily, so something has to be done to get then back in track. To go on at the government would be a waste of time, because apparently, they have other things much more important in their agendas. Most of the parents of these kids simply cannot help, because in a lot of these situations, the parents are also poorly educated, and so cannot give the necessary support these troubled kids need.

Well Organized Training Programs

So what can we do? Would it help if schools were to step in, with help from the public, on reaching out to these young people with proactive activities? Shouldn't the business community worry a little also, on helping with these projects on the building of self esteem? A lot of help is needed in these troubled times on our island with our troubled youth, so that they can eventually go forward and want to do positive things with their lives again. When we read the news everyday about youngsters ready to pick up arms to hurt one another, with out the slightest concern for the other, this is when we know that our structure is in problems. Instead of Trinbagonians calling every time for the death penalty after each crime has been committed, we should realize that, yes, some of these criminals were really animals in some of the acts that they did.


" On Tuesday, April 21, 1992, 39 year old Robert Alton Harris was put to death in the gas chamber at San Quentin Prison in California's first execution for 25 years.
He had been sentenced to die for the particularly brutal killing of two teenage boys in 1978, whose car he had hijacked for use in a bank robbery.
Robert Harris had a violent and unhappy childhood that started in the womb. He was born three months premature after his mother was brutally assaulted by his father who kicked her in the stomach.
Both parents inflicted frequent beatings on young Robert who suffered a broken jaw at the age of two after a punch from his father.
For sport, his father would load a gun and tell the children they had 30 minutes to hide outside the house, after which he would shoot them down like animals.
Eventually Harris senior was jailed for sexually molesting his daughters, while the mother smoked and drank herself to death.
Robert Harris was 25 years old when he shot and killed two San Diego teenagers. Prosecutors told the jury that Harris taunted the victims before they died, laughed at them after he pulled the trigger, then calmly ate the hamburgers they had bought for lunch."

We must really think twice before wanting to execute prisoners, no matter what, there is always a ' why '. In the end, they should not be treated like unwanted garbage, to be thrown away like that. After all, they are the products of our society ladies and gentlemen. So we must look into ourselves and help these inmates overcome the frustrations of being neglected for so long. These famous ' bad boys/girls ', are nothing more than frightened individuals, lost in their own ignorance. Let's help them, so that they in return, can take it from there...