At the formal opening of the new Wallerfield Facility of Vision on Mission, the prisoner rehabilitation facility founded by Wayne Chance, Justice Minister Emmanuel George called on the business community to help prisoners to reintegrate by offering them sustainable jobs.It's a legitimate concern, and one that should form part of the whole process of incarceration, rehabilitation and eventual reintegration into civil society if T&T is to have any hope of stemming crime.
Vision on Mission has had its challenges over the last three years even as it has grown more clearly successful in its efforts to be a successful halfway house for recently freed prisoners. In June 2012, Mr Chance declared the project strapped for cash, soon after collecting the Best NGO Award from the JB Fernandes Foundation.
By April 2013, he was asking Government to increase the $900,000 subvention, arguing that the work he was doing needed a budget of $20 million. While staying some distance from supporting that call for support, then Minister of the People Dr Glenn Ramadharsingh agreed that the organisation's work with deportees was putting it in a "critical financial condition."
Those challenges continue. The Government's announcement in October of a withdrawal of support from the project, apparently in favour of building a parallel project, has raised concerns among international sponsors, Mr Chance warned.
It is a simple fact that recidivism is high in former prisoner communities. Far too many inmates do time for small crimes, get a thorough criminal schooling in prison and, without the support of anyone on their release, return to criminal activity, far too often in a cycle that repeats itself throughout a wasted life.
For prisoners who have served their time, learned their lesson and return to society willing to make a fresh start, options remain disturbingly few. The stigma of former crimes continues to dim the perception of potential employers to the value of their contribution.
For that reason, as valuable as the intervention of Mr Chance's project has been in reintegrating former criminals and offering them a way station on their journey back, more needs to be done to improve the capacity of the prison system to change lives for the better.
One way forward would be to improve the transparency of the rehabilitation process by offering a transcript of progress to employers. Such a documentation of improvements could begin within the prisons system, where efforts at building skills and general self-improvement would be noted and continue through release programmes such as Vision on Mission.
By the time a former prisoner approaches an employer for work, he will have a third-party-certified evaluation of his efforts and skill beyond any other traditional certifications and studies successfully completed.Employers demand that of anyone who has been to school, and one way to break these roadblocks to reintegration would be to treat prison like a particularly tough school, but one with clear rewards for positive participation at journey's end.
If real alternatives are to be offered to prisoners tempted to return to their past lives and associations, projects like Vision on Mission must be supported by sustainable programmes that encourage prisoners to improve themselves and to return to a welcoming society.