Kevin Baldeosingh
Every day, an average of nine people are released from the nation’s prisons. That’s almost 300 ex-prisoners a month.
“In the context of Trinidad and Tobago approximately 98 per cent of the prison population is released back into society over time,” notes Inspector of Prisons Daniel Khan in his 2012 report.
The 2002 Task Force On Prison Reform And Transformation Report records over 20,000 people released between 1990 and 2000.
In its 2009 Annual Statistical Digest (which is the most recent one published), the Central Statistical Office records over 25,000 inmates released from prison between 2000 and 2009.
Most of these people aren’t violent offenders, however. The majority of convicted inmates in jail are there for drug offences—about 37 per cent.
Only 17 per cent of inmates have been convicted for violent crimes. And about half of those released will be arrested for other crimes and returned to jail.
The Oxford History of the Prison, edited by Norval Morris and David J Rothman, lists the following four purposes of a prison: (1) to deter crime; (2) express society’s urge for retribution; (3) reform offender; (4) incapacitate dangerous criminals.
T&T’s prisons fail to fulfil (1) and (3) and, perhaps, (4). In a 2002 study on recidivism in T&T’s prison, UWI sociologist Ian K Ramdhanie provides the following profile of a recidivist: “A male prisoner who is between 17-41 years of age, of African descent, single, a Roman Catholic, belongs to the lower social class group, committed crimes/offences such as larceny, breaking, house break-in and robbery and/or narcotic-related crimes/offences and is serving a sentence of five years or less with hard labour.”
Morris and Rothman write: “Research into the use of imprisonment over time and in different countries has failed to demonstrate any positive correlation between increasing the rate of imprisonment and reducing the rate of crime...imprisonment should be used as the sanction of last resort, to be imposed only when other measures of controlling the criminal have been tried and have failed.”
Table 1 gives a breakdown of inmates by race, age and religion.
It should be noted that Afro-Trinidadians make up 37 per cent of the general population, Indo-Trinidadians 41 per cent, and mixed 20 per cent in the 2000 census.
Although Baptists make up just seven per cent of the general population, they account for 14 per cent of inmates.
Similarly, Muslims make up six per cent of the general population but constitute 13 per cent of prisoners.
In fact, the Muslim ratio is actually wider than the Baptist one, given that most of the Muslims in prison are of African descent and that group constitutes less than one per cent of all T&T Muslims.