Now really, do you feel safe?

DEBBIE JACOB

DO YOU feel safe?

I can’t fathom what that word means any more in this country where bandits gun down innocent civilians and assassins target prison officers. I am deeply saddened by the murder of Maximum Security Prison (MSP) officer Darren Francis, who was shot dead while heading to work on October 17.

Francis worked in Rise Maximum Radio, the MSP-based prison radio station. All of us - prison officers and civilians alike who work in this nation’s prisons - were still reeling from the assassination of Wayne Jackson, the acting superintendent of MSP when hitmen killed Francis.

Cold-blooded murder is unimaginable. But these hitmen went one step further with Francis’ murder: They silenced their own prison voice. In case you don’t know, the dedicated officers at Rise Maximum Radio do the admirable job of giving inmates a voice in prison. Rise Radio records and documents all that is good in prison and seeks to inspire inmates.

With admirable professionalism, Francis worked on many recording projects for me including Port of Spain Prison’s radio soap opera and the inter-station prison debates. He was working on a recording I had requested just before he was killed.

I no longer know which is worse: those who remain silent as we face a rising murder rate; those who reduce the problem to a simple explanation or those who want to blame victims for their own demise by imagining some dastardly deed made them targets. How conveniently we forget that there is no excuse for murder.

Crime is a complex matter and these assassinations of prison officers are equally complex. The problem, which includes an irrelevant education system and a terribly imbalanced socio-economic system, can’t just be pawned off on selfish, heartless officers who traffic illicit goods. Of course those officers serving up cell phones and other contraband are a big part of the problem.

I am neither condoning nor justifying any murder, but it is high time we come to some semblance of an understanding about why we face such problems. We know inmates are fed-up of waiting ten to 12 years for their trials to creep through the unconscionable justice system. Justice delayed is indeed justice denied. Sadly, we can reduce our justice system to a worn-out cliché.

Someone working in prison recently said, “Imagine your family dog tied for a month? Think of how that dog would begin to act. Then think of men who have been incarcerated for over a decade waiting for a trial.”

Two weeks ago, at Port of Spain Prison an inmate asked if I would help in a human rights’ campaign. He said in his small wing of t he prison, 40 men had been waiting for a trial for at least ten to 12 years. That’s just one small wing in PoS Prison.

Men in remand are treated like condemned prisoners locked up for 23 hours a day with an hour to bathe and for airing, although our prisons do try to include them in many prison programmes. Think about prison officers who have had this unjust system thrust upon them. At least 60% of the inmates in our prisons are on remand waiting for trials. Their anger festers and they strike out.

We, as a society, manufacture this anger because we don’t force Government to seek solutions to our prisons’ problems, which are having a grave effect on all of us. No one can guarantee that we will be spared. Meanwhile, we are being grossly unfair to inmates and prison officers. We need to figure out solutions to our prisons’ problems. We must implement legislation that includes provisions for a speedy trial, and Government must be held accountable for making sure this happens.

We must provide safe transportation for officers to and from work in much the same way airlines do for their employees. My heart aches equally for all the people who are murdered in this country. I know far too many men on both sides of the fence who have been murdered. Each and every murder is an injustice that I don’t find Government is taking serious enough.

I think of what a prison officer told me the day of Darren Francis’s murder. In all of his grief and fear, he summed up inmates like this: “Remember these are men that every part of society has failed. They send them to us, and we try our best.” And for that, prison officers are paying with their lives.