Light from the Prison
On a steel grey day, I stood outside the Port of-Spain prison gates holding a few meagre offerings. I was told inmates needed clothes for court, toiletries, soap, shoes, books. (Hint for those who want to give this season).
Five inmates faced me, in the Prison library variously for murder, rape and armed robbery. For some reason, I had the same feeling I had the last time I was there, judging the debate competition, safer than I was in the outside world.
They know they are small fry, puppets of state fed community leaders, brutalised and neglected sons of irresponsible cruel fathers.
Mind you, they could still make a call and have someone killed or do a drug deal but it wasn’t the same power of sharks out there.
We sat for hours. They spoke of their childhoods. Variations of the same theme. They were verbally, physically and sexually abused. They were neglected. There are as many stories of childhood abuse as there are prisoners in this country.
To dehumanise them further by labelling them faceless brutes is shameful. They are not. They are one of us made from us.
Inmate 1
“I was nine. One day after school, my stepfather told me he married my mother and “cut-tail now start.” He broke belts on me, rained blows on me. A specific memory? Ok. Around then, I began collecting pigeons. I loved them, watch them grow, fly and return.
One day he came home drunk and told me the pigeons were annoying him and sent me out to buy cigarettes. When I came back, he told me to go and clean them. He had slit their throats in the sink. When I cried, he made me sit on a grater that scraped my knees and whipped me and made me eat the meat.
The happiest day of my life was when my half-brother, who was four, took a hammer and hit my stepfather on his head. As the blood poured down his head, I laughed and laughed and laughed.
I am in here for a sexual offence, the rape of a minor. Maybe just as my stepfather overpowered those pigeons, I overpowered a human. I never thought I would be grateful for these years of endless hours simply to wonder why I am on earth.
Inmate 2
“I suffered from depression as a child. I cut myself. I felt I didn’t matter. No one saw. No one cared. I didn’t care about people or myself if I died or they died. My father was nowhere. I was the only boy in my area to pass for a prestige school. I got a girl pregnant when I was 15. She was 17. She lost the baby. That loss broke me. I thought money would fill the hole in me. So when my girlfriend told me she knew a foreigner who carried US dollars, I followed the money. The man was killed.”
Inmate 3, 21 years old
My mom left to go to the States when I was a year old. I lived in institutions. By people who felt sorry for me. I never saw my father.
One day moms sent me shoes and $200. I ran away with the money and the shoes. My stepfather found me and hit me with a tile hammer, a mallet, till my head bled. I tried running from him, and he chopped my legs. I pleaded guilty for robbery. My happiest day was when my son was born. I’m crying now because I let him and my wife down.”
When I walked out of prison, I knew why I felt safer with inmates. It’s their absolute honesty. When people have hit rock bottom, have nowhere to hide, every human shield stripped from them, when they spend thousands of hours in solitude, looking within, they develop a lie detector, a piercing telescope into themselves and others.
They speak freely, honestly in a way that “free” citizens never do. We are masked and numbed to protect ourselves from one another.
Free citizens can be more bestial than the ones who are in jail. We are just not caught.
Inmate 1 had a Christmas insight for us: “It’s true that hurt people hurt others. Stop looking at somebody out there to save you. Look within at your own light. Connection and community save us like hundred-dollar bills never can. Go for that.”