Upgrading the education status of one inmate at a time before their release from prison is the goal of the new Education Officer at the Department of Corrections.Shawnette Somner led the prison team of teachers who produced a record number of graduates who earned their General Education Diploma (GED) this year.Both “ecstatic” and “humbled” by the results, she placed a particular emphasis on the younger inmates who don’t have a school leaving certificate.“I specifically look at their year of birth on the list of inmates and I try to get the younger ones, meaning those who are at the Co-ed and those who are in their 20s.”“I shared some of the stories at the graduation because a couple of graduates specifically told me that they were not interested in taking the class. They just didn’t want to do anything but they wound up coming to class because I kept on them.”Like all jobs she said: “It has its challenges and one of them is the lack of self-motivation.”She recalled the case of one inmate serving a lengthy sentence for a gun-related crime who felt that no one in his immediate family ever graduated from high school so why should he.“He was actually operating a very successful small business before he got incarcerated crime. We talked about doors of opportunity, I told him a door could open for him but he would have no proof that he ever completed his basic education.“For someone who is serving a pretty lengthy sentence I asked him what’s a few months out of his life if you’re here for several years?“When he wrote the exam he passed it the very first time. I reminded him that he said he just wasn’t interested at the graduation.“Some inmates tell me they’re too old to get their GED, and too old could be their late 30s to early 40s. The inmate who scored the highest in math is in his 30s. He was released before the results came in so I had to call him. He is now gainfully employed and working full-time.”As a former public schoolteacher who also ran her own home school she is keen to liaise with the Ministry of Education.“The sad reality is that a lot of inmates have fallen through the proverbial cracks or holes in the system,” she said.“When you can’t read and you can’t write, you can’t fill out an application form or really express yourself. The key piece a lot of people don’t even talk about is the speaking.“We need to really pull together, it’s said all the time. Saying it is one thing but it comes down to action and that takes energy.“I’m not sure what the illiteracy rate is, especially in terms of our young black males, but I’m quite sure it’s definitely cause for concern. I see it on a regular basis, it’s not age specific.“It could be 16-year-olds who struggle to just put a sentence together right up to inmates in their 50s. Some of it is generational.“What’s happening now is that you’ve got parents, a new generation, who had a lot things just given to them.“They didn’t really have to work for a whole lot, now their children are refusing to work for anything. It’s give me and you owe me, that sense of entitlement,” she said.“I was talking to a self-employed father who took his 12-year-old son to work with him. The son was grumbling and complaining that it’s too hot to work and wanted to go home.“The father told him that he was going to work for the day. Going home wouldn’t have been an option for us. If your parents said you were going to work, you were going to work.“It still goes back to people pulling together and staying together for the complete follow through.”She also commended the team of teachers and the Commissioner of Corrections Edward Lamb.“I find it rewarding because my personality type is one that if I have been able to help one person then I’m happy.“All of us were put on this Earth for a purpose, some find it later than others, but I think I always knew from little that this is what I wanted to do.“Our job is to help to empower inmates to become the people that we want them to be when they return to society.“I don’t look at inmates and see the crime, most times I don’t even think about it. I’m not looking to say this one’s murderer, and this one’s a sex offender.“I just see them as people who have made bad choices and I’ve let them know that there is good in all of us.”And, if it was up to her, inmates who come into prison without a GED will be released with their certificate to help break the cycle of recidivism.The GED programme was established in the Island’s prisons in the late 1990s by former Progressive Labour Party MP Neletha Butterfield.