It seems as if every expert has given an opinion on the nation's prisons, the plight of inmates and of the officers. Little has been said, however, about the teenage girls, especially adolescents, who are detained at Golden Grove. These are not trafficked women from a foreign country, nor are they hardened criminals; I refer to the adolescents (12,13,14-year-olds?) who are deemed "out of control" but unlike the boys have nowhere to go and no YTC at which to languish until they age out.
Ageism and sexism, relics of the past, are still blatant in our penal system, despite every UN policy concerning human rights. How many more of our daughters currently experiencing the spectrum of abuse at home and school, by fighting back or "acting out" in self-destructive ways, will be locked away there, out of sight...out of mind?
I read Debbie Jacob's article and heard her well-deserved pride in her success at YTC. These lads have committed crimes, some heinous and yet are treated with dignity and nurtured as the future (if not present) fathers of the nation's children.How many of these future mothers have committed similar crimes? Do they not merit the same state sponsored benefits? Are a few sporadic retiree volunteers all they deserve?
Sit among any schoolchildren and listen...you will hear the collective anger of at least two generations since Ella's seminal calypso: if they were missing then, where are we now? The message we are sending our girls, the women whose cramped space they share, the female officers struggling to hold and treat is: NOBODY CARES (yuh eat de bread de devil knead)!This is my plaintive cry from the edge of despair; I really hope it catches the ear of the powerful.
Deborah Clement
Arouca