“It takes a village to raise a child”— African proverb

We often consider the lives of only the victims of criminality when it comes to the sentencing and treatment of offenders in our island. But the impacts of crime extend beyond just those who were directly harmed by those acts. And so our society needs to examine how our treatment of offenders — Black men — impacts a wider audience.

The generational impacts of crime in our society are clear to see. I don’t think anyone will, in any seriousness, deny its effects among a certain demographic in our community. We can easily look within the Black population of our island and see that they have been hardest hit by the lingering effects of crime and, also, incarceration.

The stories of young men and women being raised without their fathers is more than just anecdotal. The struggles of single mothers who no longer enjoy the physical and financial support of their parental partners is a very real hurdle to overcome. So how do we do more to assist those who are affected by the incarceration of a criminal offender?

It is a very real scenario in this island where a single mother earns too much to qualify for financial assistance. Yet she would not have been put in the situation to need it but for the actions of another. While incarceration may be the right punishment for the crime committed, it still does not diminish its impact on this mother or her child(ren).

Instead of having two incomes to pay for the expenses of the child(ren), there is now one. The loss of the physical presence of the father is already profound but the financial impacts can be even more devastating. Housing, clothing, food and extracurricular activities are now being scrutinised like never before. Ultimately, the child suffers from the inevitable compromises that must be made.

Some people may be saying to themselves, “Well, the father shouldn’t have got locked up” or “No one told her to have a baby with him”, but those would be the voices of the foolish. Or maybe they are the voices of those privileged few who got to choose who their parents were (sarcasm). Those would also be the voices of those who fail to acknowledge that there are, and have been, men in our prisons who have been incarcerated not for wilfully criminal behaviour but for foolish and, even, tragic mistakes.

But even if we were to highlight only the situations of men who have made wilfully destructive choices that led to their incarceration, there are still children and mothers that deserve the island’s sympathy and consideration. Through no fault of their own, their lives have been upended, too. Is it fair that our government ignores their plight?

I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the work of the third sector. What they do throughout our island is tremendous and impacts the lives of so many. But they have been facing challenging economic conditions for many years now. Their reach can extend only so far. The Government needs to make it easier for mothers in these special circumstances to qualify for financial assistance. Similar to how there is a fund for victims of crime via the Criminal Injuries (Compensation) Board, there should be one for these women and their children. Monies in the Confiscated Assets Fund could be used to establish this.

Ultimately, what we need is an environment where those who are incarcerated are able to earn meaningful wages so that they themselves can contribute to their financial commitments. A man coming to prison does not absolve him of his responsibilities as a father, yet that is how our existing system treats fathers. The men in our prisons are not looking for handouts; they want to work. They want to take care of their responsibilities, but that simply isn’t possible at present.

The wages that prisoners earn is a paltry sum. This needs to urgently be amended – although I doubt that there is any political appetite to allocate more money in the budget for criminals. So we then need to get more prisoners working in and out of our facilities. Bermuda has no public works programme. None. And work inside our prisons is often done by vendors at a much higher rate than what could be paid to inmates. This goes against the spirit and letter of the law (Prison Rules 1980 section 47). It doesn’t make any sense economically. From a fiscal perspective, the Government would benefit from inmates doing some of the road, parks and facilities works that are going neglected across our island.

The work-release programme that the Department of Corrections oversees needs to be reviewed. At present, it has a minuscule number of prisoners enrolled. This means that more than 95 per cent of the men in our prisons are earning only $1 per day. What exacerbates the problem of not being able to meet one’s financial obligations is that, even if one had accumulated sufficient funds, there is no easy way for a prisoner to send money from their savings accounts to a loved one. In fact, this is permitted only at the approval of the Minister of Justice.

An inmate’s savings account is supposed to serve as a safety net of sorts when someone completes their term of incarceration. These funds are to assist with a newly released person’s expenses; to help them restart their life. So I can understand why it would not be ideal to have these funds easily accessible. But here’s the problem with the status quo: the amount that one would receive, even after a lengthy sentence, isn’t sufficient in today’s economic climate. This creates a risk for those who are released and don’t have a support system. It increases the likelihood that they will be enticed to commit criminal acts just to take care of their basic needs.

The public may not like the idea of prisoners being in the community on supervised work release. It is easy to understand why. But is it right that innocent mothers and children are suffering further from a father’s incarceration? Is the status quo fair to them?

It is hoped that the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Kim Wilkerson; the Reverend Emily Gail Dill MP; Robert King MP; and Paul Wilmott, the Progressive Labour Party candidate for Warwick North Central (Constituency 27), who have made encouraging public statements about change to our justice and prison systems, will bring it to fruition.

A good start in this change would be for them to unearth the (Keith) Munns Report and release it to the public. One has to ask why the report, written in 2019 and reported on by The Royal Gazette, has yet to be released. Perhaps the reasons are similar to why the (Phil) Wheatley Report, commissioned in 2012 and also reported on by this newspaper, has not been released.

• Behind The Walls is a resident of Westgate Correctional Facility