This is hope­ful­ly not go­ing to be tak­en as a face­tious state­ment but in T&T the elec­tron­ic bracelet planned for "mis­cre­ants" may be­come syn­ony­mous with sim­i­lar fads such as gold teeth, trousers worn re­al­ly low or acres of chains around the neck. We are deal­ing with a pop­u­la­tion that craves what­ev­er is in the First World and recog­nised as up­beat.These elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing­bracelets, or what­ev­er else Jus­tice Min­is­ter Vol­ney can bring to the bar­gain­ing ta­ble in his ef­forts to ef­fec­tive­ly con­trol "pris­on­ers," is yet an­oth­er chal­lenge to our vast­ly tal­ent­ed "bad boys." Like a black belt in ju­do, ac­quir­ing these elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing de­vices, specif­i­cal­ly made to or­der in colours to go with youth "threads," may take on a sar­to­r­i­al flavour. In oth­er words, and true to our en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it, looka­like br­a­clets may end up be­ing sold along with the $10 watch­es and il­le­gal cds.

In­stead of be­long­ing to just any old street gang, be­ing point­ed out as one of Min­is­ter Vol­ney's spe­cial­ly anoint­ed "bad boys" will see the bracelets mov­ing in­to the "must-haves" for lo­cal ban­dit iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Then of course there is the ra­dio sta­tion, which I must ad­mit is a most hu­mane idea.. It has the po­ten­tial to­give Ian Al­leyne stiff com­pe­ti­tion. The pris­ons have, year af­ter year, brought out a tal­ent­ed line in in­car­cer­at­ed of­fend­ers who can sing a mean ca­lyp­so. Their broad­casts, apart from con­nect­ing fam­i­lies, will spawn many a lo­cal ra­dio ge­nius and vast­ly tal­ent­ed en­ter­tain­ers. Ku­dos are in or­der for Min­is­ter Vol­ney's ef­forts to bring a most ar­cha­ic prison sys­tem in­to the First World. There is just as im­por­tant an im­per­a­tive to feed the mind as well as the body and re­tain the fam­i­ly links for the chil­dren.

We should quick­ly im­prove the con­di­tions and the qual­i­ty of food served. On a per­son­al view, cell­phones should be al­lowed with the clear un­der­stand­ing that all con­ver­sa­tions will be tape-record­ed. Sounds pie-in-the-sky? There are no lim­its to what our ban­dits can ac­com­plish. The sta­tis­tics speak for them­selves. The Gov­ern­ment would do well to quick­ly launch the pris­ons ra­dio and even en­cour­age ad­ver­tis­ing slots to a for­ward think­ing busi­ness elite. The cred­i­bil­i­ty rat­ing of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship is be­ing erod­ed by leaps and bounds. The words "think be­fore you speak and act" should re­place the theme "We will rise" be­cause, let's face it, the PP's po­lit­i­cal cake has on­ly par­tial­ly risen, the po­lit­i­cal stove is over­heat­ed, and the dry burnt toast on of­fer is be­ing queried by even for­mal­ly loy­al UNC/ COP sup­port­ers.

Lynette Joseph

Via e-mail