In a pas­sion­ate let­ter to the Trinidad Guardian yes­ter­day, two young read­ers, Ijanaya Ja­cob and Nicha Cas­sir­am, ar­gued pas­sion­ate­ly against the pub­li­ca­tion a pho­to­graph of pris­on­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing ex­u­ber­ant­ly at the con­clu­sion of a ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tion at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison at Gold­en Grove, Arou­ca on the pa­per's Fri­day front page. "How are the fam­i­lies of the sons and daugh­ters who have been mur­dered in cold blood, the vic­tims who have been robbed at gun­point of their valu­able items, the women who have been raped, or the chil­dren that are vic­tims of mo­lesta­tion sup­posed to feel when they pick up your news­pa­per and see these ab­hor­rent hu­man be­ings en­joy­ing their lives, lives that are lived be­cause of our tax pay­ing dol­lars," the two con­cerned cit­i­zens wrote. It is not a point that we were numb to dur­ing the ed­i­to­r­i­al process. In­deed, there was a vig­or­ous dis­cus­sion about the cov­er pho­to se­lec­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the con­text of an­oth­er re­cent pho­to, which record­ed the par­tic­i­pa­tion at a women's ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tion.

On the sur­face of things, this news­pa­per is com­mit­ted to ex­ten­sive cov­er­age in both words and pho­tographs of the many as­pects of the Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions and re­ports on pris­ons based Car­ni­val events have been a part of our as­sign­ment list­ings ever since they be­gan. The deep­er is­sue at play here; how­ev­er, is the ques­tion of ex­act­ly what pris­ons are for and what a pro­gres­sive na­tion needs them to be. "Prison," a pop­u­lar lo­cal say­ing goes, "wasn't made to ripen fig." Con­verse­ly, no-one ex­pects these in­sti­tu­tions of in­car­cer­a­tion to ac­tive­ly groom and breed even deep­er crim­i­nal­i­ty in every of­fend­er who en­ters their gates.

It may be com­fort­ing for vic­tims and their fam­i­lies to see of­fend­ers face jus­tice and pay for their crimes by be­ing re­moved from so­ci­ety, its free­doms and its ben­e­fits, but there is a school of thought grow­ing in promi­nence that's worth con­sid­er­ing, which holds that pris­on­ers judged guilty should more ac­tive­ly par­tic­i­pate in mak­ing resti­tu­tion to the wronged and con­tribut­ing more di­rect­ly to the so­ci­ety that is, as Ja­cob and Cas­sir­am note, hous­ing and feed­ing them from the pub­lic purse. The clear­est fo­cus in fresh ef­forts at re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion must be on so­cial en­gage­ment and par­tic­i­pa­tion. Ad­dress­ing weak­ness­es in these es­sen­tial hu­man re­la­tions skills is key to turn­ing crim­i­nals, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who have found their iden­ti­ties in the bru­tal­ly con­sis­tent be­hav­iours of gang life and thug­gery, in­to more ful­ly formed in­di­vid­u­als ca­pa­ble of mak­ing in­de­pen­dent de­ci­sions that run counter to the ready temp­ta­tions of­fered by their peers.

That's the think­ing be­hind ini­tial­ly eye-open­ing pro­pos­als such as con­ju­gal vis­its and yes, ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions, which draw pris­on­ers in­to greater ac­knowl­edge­ment and ac­count­abil­i­ty for their ac­tions and ul­ti­mate­ly their per­son­al fu­tures. For any pun­ish­ment to be ef­fec­tive, it must be bal­anced with re­ward and both must ex­ist in a val­ue sys­tem that pro­motes ed­u­ca­tion, skills ac­qui­si­tion, so­cial rein­te­gra­tion and the still to be ful­ly ex­plored con­cepts of restora­tive jus­tice. It's tempt­ing to em­brace the idea that crim­i­nals should be sim­ply locked away from po­lite, God-fear­ing and law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, but our most re­cent his­to­ry does not sug­gest that such an ap­proach re­sults in any im­prove­ment in ei­ther the crime rate or the qual­i­ty of per­son leav­ing our prison sys­tem.

In­stead of seek­ing sig­na­tures for a re­sump­tion of hang­ing or drop­ping talk of con­ju­gal vis­its in­to the na­tion­al dis­cus­sion, the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Cab­i­net might find it more pro­duc­tive to cre­ate a green pa­per on pris­ons re­form that ad­dress­es con­cepts such as restora­tive jus­tice, which when it suc­cess­ful­ly ap­plied, re­duces prison in­take, and be­hav­iour based re­ward sys­tems that ac­tive­ly im­prove the prospects for pris­on­ers af­ter their re­lease. A prison sen­tence has long been de­scribed as pay­ing your debt to so­ci­ety. In­creas­ing­ly, that re­pay­ment is be­ing made through ac­tive en­gage­ment with vic­tims and pro­grammes that po­si­tion con­vict­ed crim­i­nals in a more use­ful role in so­ci­ety than sim­ply star­ing at prison walls for the du­ra­tion of their sen­tence. It's cer­tain­ly wor­thy of more pub­lic dis­cus­sion and de­bate.