Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

The need for ad­di­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties to ad­e­quate­ly ac­com­mo­date women de­por­tees and for­mer pris­on­ers were one of sev­er­al is­sues raised at a grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny of a pre-re­lease pro­gramme for in­mates of the Gold­en Grove Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, Arou­ca, on Wednes­day.

The pro­gramme which aims to pro­vide vo­ca­tion­al train­ing and life-skills for the in­mates to pre­pare them for life af­ter re­lease was one of sev­er­al ini­tia­tives in­volv­ing the TT Prison Ser­vice and non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion (NGO) Vi­sion on Mis­sion.

Dur­ing her fea­ture ad­dress Vi­sion on Mis­sion’s CEO Giselle Chance said as the num­ber of fe­male de­por­tees re­turn­ing to T&T is ex­pect­ed to in­crease, there was ur­gent need for suf­fi­cient fa­cil­i­ties to house them.

“Cur­rent­ly we have no more room at the inn as we speak.

“So if there were to be a fe­male re­leased to­mor­row, I would have nowhere to house them, that’s as of to­day and un­for­tu­nate­ly we have come to the point where we have lim­it­ed ap­pro­pri­ate and safe spaces to house our women who are in need of our ser­vices.”

Chance said chal­lenges fac­ing the group’s op­er­a­tions weren’t on­ly lim­it­ed to hous­ing, but al­so the avail­abil­i­ty of oth­er re­sources as she urged par­tic­i­pants to make the most of their fa­cil­i­ties to lead more ful­fill­ing, healthy lives.

She al­so warned that Vi­sion on Mis­sion would not tol­er­ate any par­tic­i­pant who in­tend­ed to con­tin­ue their crim­i­nal­i­ty while un­der their roof, as there were strict reg­u­la­tions to fol­low.

Re­fer­ring to some par­tic­i­pants who may see their pro­grammes and shel­ters as a hide­out, she said the choic­es they make could have se­ri­ous con­se­quences.

“It’s not about a safe space on­ly. You have to par­tic­i­pate in the pro­gramme and I’m say­ing it big now.

“You have to come and do the work ... it’s more than just a place to stay, be­cause if you come to us just to be safe and you don’t do the work, the minute you step out­side, the choic­es you make will de­ter­mine where your next res­i­dence will be and it could be here or in a place with a nice dec­o­rat­ed head­stone or not. The choice is yours.”

De­spite these chal­lenges, Chance said, she was op­ti­mistic that the group would re­ceive the nec­es­sary sup­port to ful­fil their man­date.

Al­so speak­ing at the launch was spe­cial tech­ni­cal ad­vi­sor to the Min­istry of De­fence ret’d Ma­jor Ri­car­do Steven­son who praised the work of Vi­sion on Mis­sion in lob­by­ing for a thor­ough re­form of in­mates to be­come pro­duc­tive mem­bers of so­ci­ety.

As he ac­knowl­edged their achieve­ments, Steven­son who pre­sent­ed an ad­dress on be­half of De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge reaf­firmed the min­istry’s com­mit­ment in sup­port­ing ini­tia­tives aimed at restora­tive jus­tice.

But even with the gov­ern­ment’s sup­port, Steven­son said, the col­lab­o­ra­tion from every sec­tor of so­ci­ety was need­ed for a suc­cess­ful shift in how jus­tice is dis­pensed.

“Let me be frank, this trans­for­ma­tion can­not hap­pen in iso­la­tion, it needs peo­ple, part­ner­ships and pub­lic will.

“That is why we are call­ing on mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions to of­fer work and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion path­ways, we are call­ing on pri­vate sec­tor en­ti­ties to open doors to re­form in­di­vid­u­als and civ­il so­ci­ety to shift the nar­ra­tive from pun­ish­ment to pos­si­bil­i­ty.

Al­so speak­ing at the cer­e­mo­ny was in­mate and past par­tic­i­pant of the pro­gramme Ma­jeed Ho­sein who im­plored fel­low in­mates to make full use of the train­ing they learned.

He said the pro­gramme had helped him sharp­en his skills and was con­fi­dent that it could be equal­ly im­pact­ful to oth­ers once they were pre­pared to in­vest their time and ef­fort.

“I got 25 cer­tifi­cates and I’m still look­ing to get 25 more again.”

At the end of the cer­e­mo­ny, in­mates were in­vit­ed to col­lect their cer­tifi­cates of com­ple­tion which were pre­sent­ed by dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers and of­fi­cials in­clud­ing act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­raspe.