BVI : Education Minister Myron Walwyn, whose portfolio also includes responsibility for the prisons, feels too much of the territory’s young men are behind bars when they should be a part of the community contributing to the development of the territory.
Walwyn’s comments were made following his visit at Her Majesty’s Prison at Balsam Ghut last week. He said one of his biggest concerns is the amount of young people filling the cells at Balsam Ghut.
“It’s a serious problem and a national security issue as far as I am concerned to know that we have the future of this country, the young men in particular, up at Balsam Ghut rather than being here in the community and making a contribution to the development of the territory. It concerns me very greatly,” he said.
Walwyn said the lack of proper education, break down in the family structure, among other things, are reasons why people end up in prison.
“It’s no secret that living in the world and living in the BVI today is far different and challenging than when we were growing up, but what ever the causes are, we have to arrest them because this trend, we have to find a way to stem the tide because it’s a bad situation. When I walked in there and I saw the amount of young men there doing nothing, sitting around waiting for their time to pass, it’s very disturbing to me, both as a parent and the minister responsible for prisons, so certainly one of the things we are going to do is to look very quickly at the rehabilitation process. I think that is something that needs attention because we have to try to get these young men in particular trained and deal with the deficiencies that they have so that when they are released they can become productive members of the society, because if we do not do that they are going to continue to re-offend; but it is a serious problem that needs to be addressed, Walwyn explained.
The minister disclosed areas of rehabilitation his ministry will be looking into.
“When we were campaigning, I spoke particularly on the issue of seeing what we can do in helping the prisoners get a high school diploma and also to put different programmes in the prisons, whether it’s air conditioning, whether it’s carpentry, automotive; get those programmes in place so that they can learn a skill during the time while they are there, so that when they come out there is a better transition and lessening the possibility of re-offending,” the education minister said.
The minister said that in speaking to the inmates they have expressed an interest in learning a skill while they are in prison.
“There were some concerns, and in relation to rehabilitation, a number of them have been saying that for quite a while, a number of them said to me that yes they realized that they have done something wrong to put them there but they themselves are asking for these programmes to be put in place, and that in itself is encouraging because it tells me that they want to do better and so we have to do our part to help them by getting these programmes in place. There were some other concerns that they have that we are going to address later on but the biggest issue for them for them and also this government is the rehabilitation process at the prison,” Walwyn said.
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