FORGIVE PRISONERS

This was the appeal of Roman Catholic Archbishop Joseph Harris at yesterday’s Pilgrimage Through the Mercy Door for prisoners at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Port-of- Spain.

“You must not be left by the way. You are part of us... when you leave the prison, you go out into the world, not to take revenge (for the lack of their freedom) but you go out there to use the gifts and talents that you have to help us and to help build a better TT,” Harris told the prisoners.

Anglican Bishop Claude Berkeley joined Archbishop Harris in welcoming 124 inmates from Carrera Convict Prison, Golden Grove Prison, Maximum Security Prison, Port of Spain Prison, Remand Prison, Women’s Prison, Youth Training Centre (YTC), and the Eastern Correctional Rehabilitation Centre to the mass, at which they walked through the cathedral’s Mercy Door. The event is part of the global Roman Catholic Church’s Year of Mercy.

Harris said citizens needed to recognise that, although they did things that they should not have done, many of those who leave prison were reformed and were willing to make a tremendous contribution to the development of society. He then pledged that he and other religious leaders would help in any way they could. “No matter what we may have done in life, no matter the difficulties, the obstacles, the disabilities, we can become whatever we want to become with God’s grace... Take this opportunity, become the people Almighty God wants you to become and one day all of us would be able to say, ‘Thank Almighty God for His tremendous mercies toward us,’” he said.

Archbishop Harris had previously made an appeal for prisoners to be pardoned by the State in a national act of mercy, but while supported by sectors of the Judiciary there has been no action on his call.

Monsignor Christian Pereira assured the inmates that incarceration was not be the end of their lives but an opportunity to demonstrate grace and honour, and to care for those who share the same facility. “No matter what your circumstances are, you have the capacity to care and do good to others,” he said.

Prisoners: God transforms us Prisoner Alladin Mohammed, of Carrera, stated his belief that no true transformation was complete without a close connection with God. “While it is true that we are shaped by experience, we are also shaped by the influence of religion, politics, and other value systems. The importance of church in the life of an inmate can not be emphasised enough,” he said.

Mohammed noted that the TT Prisons Service had moved away from retributive to restorative justice, and that through practice and contemplation they grasped a form of goodness, which enabled them to be good.

However, he said the reformation of inmates was the social responsibility of the people of TT, and that they needed to stop shirking their duty so as to achieve a safer country.

Speaking to members of the media after the service, Women’s Prison inmate, Leandra Clarke, stated the pilgrimage was overwhelming and she appreciated that it placed the prisons and its inmates in a positive light.

“Most people, when they think of the prisons and the inmates they think of only the negative but there are lots of positives that comes out of the prisons. Not only in the form of talents like drawing and whatnot. We have people doing subjects there. We have positive role models - inmates as well as officers,” she said.

Clarke also advocated for “restorative conferencing” saying she would like to see it done more often in the justice system. She explained that offenders and the victims, or family of the victims, would meet and communicate on the matter without malice or violence. “We in turn now get the opportunity to say that we are sorry for what we have done.

It smoothens out a lot of things.

A lot of times it doesn’t even have to reach to the court because of the restorative conferencing,” she said.

Commissioner of Prisons Sterling Stewart agreed there were persons in prisons who, because of the programmes and their decision to follow God, were no longer a risk to citizens of TT.

He said prison was a place to touch lives, to make changes, give prisoners opportunities to prove themselves, and to try to develop a “character of goodness.” He expressed the faith that what the Prison Service was doing worked so that when inmates were released, they would be good, law-abiding citizens.

Part of that process, he said, was the church.

Stewart said the Prisons Service had a “symbiotic relationship” with the church as they were in the same business of touching lives, saving lives, and transformation.

“With preparation for reintegration you have to talk about the renewing of the mind because the mind and the heart determine your action, words, and behaviour. As such this symbiotic relationship, and what’s happening here, the symbolic going through the door of mercy...

when we go through that door, we close the door on darkness and sin, unrighteousness and foolishness and anger, anything that’s negative. We go through that door, never to return,” he said.

He hoped that one day people would see the change in the inmates, and to do so he said the Prisons Service would continue to organise more masses, more community service projects, charitable works, and displays to highlight the skills of the inmates.