Prisons reflect the society

THE EDITOR: I want to suggest that until something concrete is done about prison reform in this country,  the Minister of Education Mrs Hazel Manning and her team hold all their meetings and consultations in the cell block of the Royal Gaol and or at the Remand Centre at the Golden Grove Prison. Carrera, the island prison, can be reserved for their retreats. I feel sure that the former Minister of Education will be happy to accept an invitation to join them. I too am prepared to join them so that I can verify the conditions, record and analyse what happens during the process. We can all have tea with the inmates eating and drinking what they normally do. Incidentally tea time is around the same time that the slop buckets are emptied. This will make for quite a treat.

This experience can assist us to make the connections between reform in the education system and prison reform. Not only in terms of the inmates but just as important those who administer the system. It will be useful for both government and opposition if they too can hold their Parliament and Senate meetings there. Lest they forget, they too like all of us are potential prison inmates. The prison is in many ways a representation of our society. We may see ourselves in painful but useful ways that perhaps we have not done before. We will see how people of diverse backgrounds, thrown together by circumstance, learn to live together in a small place. How in spite of the wealth in the society, they function in poor housing, overrun by rats and cockroaches, lack of basic tools and amenities,  no health care in spite of highly communicable diseases, experience problems of transportation, malfunctioning justice system, and curtailment of their freedom due to crime and violence. 

We will also get a first hand experience of unbridled capitalism at work, an appreciation of how people are abandoned when they do not fit in, the horrors of issues of class, race, and gender in our society. Perhaps we may even learn the value human rights, appreciate what political participation means, and force us to look at leadership in our society. We must bear in mind that all of this is happening within a so called independent society which continues to operate with and within archaic models, systems and institutions both physical and psychological, which we hold on to because we are so afraid of ourselves. 

VERNA ST ROSE GREAVES
Diego Martin