Awaiting freedom from behind bars
May 20, 2007
PRISON, in any language, is not a pleasant place. Just ask Mark, who is awaiting his turn to face the Parole Board, or James, who on Friday morning, walked out a free man after more than 20 years behind bars.
"Prison is rough, the worst place for anyone to be," Mark tells The Sunday Gleaner.
James says it is the "last place a young man can find himself."
Unlike Mark, James was preparing to bid a final goodbye to life behind bars when we spoke.
"From mi get di news Thursday, mi just nuh have nuh appetite. Mi just can't wait. Mi overwhelmed with joy and as mi reach outside, mi a go talk to di youths an mek dem know seh prison a nuh some weh fi come," he tells The Sunday Gleaner.
James, 48, left prison after almost 23 years for a murder which he was found guilty of committing and for which he was sentenced to hang.
Sorry for the deed
Mary Lynch raises her hands in triumph after being released from the Fort Augusta Correctional Centre in St. Catherine. - Ian Allen/Staff Photographer
Mark, meanwhile, plans to apply for parole before year-end. He has already spent 13 years behind bars - also for murder - but says he wants a chance to show the world that he is sorry for the deed he has done, and that he has been rehabilitated.
If his parole hearing is successful, Mark plans to go into the world of graphic designing, an art he learned behind bars. For now, however, he has to concentrate his energy on joining that long line of persons who are waiting for the parole board to determine their fate.
More than 300 persons are parolees-in-waiting at the island's maximum security prisons. Six were released last week, including Earl Pratt, a part of the infamous Pratt and Morgan duo; Mary Lynch; and, McOrdie Morrison, whose 2004 Supreme Court ruling Major Richard Reese, the commissioner of corrections, says has contributed to the current backlog of cases before the Parole Board.
Because of the Morrison ruling, persons whose death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment got a shot at parole.
Despite the vast number of persons facing the Parole Board, there is no guarantee that these people will all be made free. The Parole Act forcefully sets out how a person becomes eligible for parole. Such persons must also satisfy a battery of tests and evaluation of both their behaviour inside the prison and their mental state in order for the board to gauge their readiness to be reintegrated into society.
Major Reese says that there is a 99.9 per cent compliance rate among parolees and this, he says, speaks to the comprehensive nature of the parole process and excellent selection decisions by the board....
Author: Daraine Luton
Source: Jamaica Gleaner
