Trade ‘licks’ for books in prison

THE EDITOR: Recently I heard or read of some bright idea of our esteemed Prime Minister to administer “licks” to prisoners who are found guilty of certain crimes. To the whole question of additional punishment to prisoners, I say “not licks.” Personally, I feel sorry for perpetrators or victims of violence and ten out of ten times, perpetrators of crimes had been victims of some sort of crime. We may never know what the crime might have been, for the victims never advertise it and no one generally wants to know. But it is important to the victim and sometimes the only way for him/her to feel better is to attack others in order to make them pay for what had been done to him/her self.

Those who find themselves in trouble with the law should have been counselled or rehabilitated and made aware of his/her actions as being anti-social and that being wronged is not reason sufficient to go out and wrong others. As it is, these offenders still cannot perceive that they are doing a wrong thing and the prison system does nothing to help. So they come out and promptly repeat their crimes and go back in ad infinitum. It is obvious that they need money to stay alive, feed themselves, buy clothes, etc and where are they going to get it from except to relieve someone else?Instinct will make the “someone else” want to protect his property and altercations will follow resulting in damage or death. I say all this because a lot of ordinary people will say that they do not know how so-and-so became a bandit because he/she was such a nice child and so on.

Ordinary people have all the blame to take in the criminalisation of a child. Some females make children only because it is a natural consequence of other pleasurable pastimes. As a result they neither care for the child nor its needs. They treat the child with contempt, often insulting and abusing physically an innocent child and leave it to the care of other unfeeling sub-humans while carrying on with their lives. Those sub-humans take advantage of the defenceless child and perpetrate actions of further abuse on an already traumatised infant. Other times a female may have been in a stable relationship and had a few children for the male in the relationship. Then up comes the unforseen circumstance where either father dies or leaves the family. Mother can’t cope or earn money in the normal way.

She casts about for a male replacement and if he is not comfortable with her children may recommend that she put them out of the house. She does not have the guts to choose her own child over the man she just met. Mother and father both cared for children, but died in an accident of some sort. Relatives can’t be bothered to take in and treat the traumatised children with dignity and respect. So they treat them with disdain and make them feel like their parent’s death was their fault. Even other times mammy just leaves the child with granny who can’t mind herself let alone another small child. One must not forget what granny produces in the first place and so a similar bringing up awaits grandchild.

In cases like these children behave violently in school and can’t sustain meaningful relationships. If ordinary people hardly know good behaviour for prejudicial and right from wrong with their own, what will they do with others? Children from comparatively stable homes are just a little better disciplined, that’s all. So, if any or all these unfortunates end up in jail, should we advocate more beating and wash our hands of the matter? I would like to suggest the drastic measure of forcing them to study mathematics, reading and comprehension as a start. Instead of encouraging them to rape other inmates, peddle dope and instigate regular beatings on defenceless prisoners, prison officers could be trained to conduct academic classes and make sure the prisoners learn. This could be the alternative to more beatings and when the prisoner learns to read he then empowers himself to move out of the crime circuit in a way that no beatings will.

SUE SANKAR
Chaguanas