EDITORIAL - Jail time no badge of honour

A number of our young males seem to have this view that they can do harm to anyone who offends them and then they can simply sit idly in prison and wait until their jail sentence ends.

 

While it is said that prison is no picnic, it appears that some of our young people are caught up with this notion that serving jail time is like having some badge of honour, and they are quite willing to be sentenced, knowing that they will be revered when they return to certain circles in society. 

 

Worse yet, serving several jail terms somehow elevates their status amongst the boys on the block and others in their warped circle.

 

Hard labour?

To this end, we need to look at some kind of labour programme for these able bodied males who are going off to Her Majesty’s Prisons Dodds, in St. Philip. 

It is not quite clear how active the prison’s farm programme still is, however, we know that one, in some form or fashion, should be offered for inmates. 

 

Perhaps different initiatives can be tailored to suit the needs of prisoners; for example, those on lighter sentences should not be subjected to the same programmes as those for hardened criminals.

 

Too many prisoners are sitting idly in prison and it is time that the country benefits from their labour and, if need be, hard labour.

 

Early release not for everyone

Turing our attention now to this issue of inmates being rehabilitated and released: 

 

Only a person with a cold heart would object to inmates having access to some form of rehabilitation programme. What the public may have an issue with, however, is this notion that inmates should be released because they have served lots of time in prison and are now “behaving good”, especially if the person has been proven, with hard evidence, to have premeditated a murder or two and carried it/them out. 

 

What about the victim who is six feet under? Can he or she return after a few years? What about the victim’s family? Must they relive the entire gruesome scenario they have tried to put behind them time and time again, as they encounter their loved one’s murderer on the street? 

 

We have to be sensible about this and decide who is a “good candidate” for release and look at the person’s case file and see what the circumstances were surrounding the events that occurred. If the person has committed murder more than once or killed several people in one go,  why would one even consider releasing this inmate? 

 

The Privy Council’s Mercy Committee should also take these factors into account before handing down an irreversible decision. There has been some outcry about the way things are being done by this Committee and as such, the voices of Barbadians should be taken into account. After all, we live in a democratic society, don’t we?