Garth Rattray NO ONE can deny the fundamental responsibility that every country has to ensure the proper education and development of the children who are wards of the state. The true measure of a society does not lie in fiscal successes or the capacity to host international games and conferences; it lies in its ability to take care of those human beings dependent upon it for support, guidance and growth.
As we proudly hosted the International Netball Federation's World Netball Championships, the nation's welcoming smile was ruined by embarrassingly ugly stains wrought by the mistreatment of and indifference towards our child wards.
SHOCKING REVELATIONS
The shocking revelations of abuse, neglect and apathy in some of our children's homes will resonate within the conscience of our society for some time to come. Not to detract from our children's predicament, but we need to remember that adult prisoners are state wards too and that the current system has repugnant shortcomings that manifest daily within those institutions.
As Mr. Delroy Chuck remarked, "The Keating Report could easily be duplicated for virtually every state institution". Our high-security adult correctional facilities are dilapidated and dangerously overcrowded. Officials within the system yearn for the wherewithal and the tools to transform inmates into better human beings, but all they can do is wait until the administration prioritises true prison reform.
If we continue to allow our incarcerated to languish and to return to society the same or worse than when they were institutionalised, we are only facilitating the perpetual cycle of ignorance, hostility, aggression, crime and violence.
Whatever efforts we now plan to put into the children's homes should also be put into the adult correctional facilities. I proffer that most people care little for prisoners and prison reform because they believe that wrongdoers deserve to be simply locked away somewhere since it was their choice to commit the wrongs that landed them behind bars.
I am not disputing the rationale for punitive incarceration, nor am I placating criminal acts, but we must realise that crime is the by-product of a flawed society. There has to be some socio-economic incongruity at work for criminality to exist.
Not all poor nations have problems with crime but many rich ones do. Crime is indisputably the most reliable barometer of the health of a nation. It is to society what a fever is to an infection. We don't treat a fever simply by overwhelming it with anti-pyretic medication, so we should not treat crime simply by incarcerating criminals; we must reform them or else we will be setting ourselves up for a protracted, bloody and brute force anti-crime campaign that we can never win.
A part of any "sentence" should be mandatory psychological assessment, counselling, anger-management and academic/vocational training. Certain aspects of prison reform have not only stalled but seem to be going in the wrong direction.
For instance, there was a recent directive to discontinue educational classes outside of prison for a certain category of inmate, effectively closing the door of opportunity for many trying to improve their lot in life.
Many people enter the prison system because their entire upbringing, their basic acculturation, their environmental handicap and their educational shortfalls put them at odds with the law.
Like the communities that spawned them, overcrowded prisons with sparse facilities are depositing frustrated, angry and unemployable people who are unable to escape their former nefarious lifestyles back into society.
The embarrassing state of affairs existing within the children's services has drawn public comments like, "We are all guilty" and "We did nothing". Everything said in relation to the child wards is applicable to adults who are also wards of the state. It is in our best interests to see to it that our adult wards become better, more equipped individuals. Anti-crime efforts must begin with the stemming of anti-social attitudes and practices. What better way to achieve this than to reform our "captive" audiences, so to speak? If we continue to fail at properly caring for our wards (of all ages), we can kiss any hope of lasting peace and prosperity for Jamaica goodbye.
Dr. Garth A. Rattray is a medical doctor with a family practice.
