University of the West Indies Professor Dwayne Devonish wants to see Barbados’ reintegration programme “strongly resourced” and an “all-of-country approach” to helping people released from prison.
He was addressing yesterday’s opening of a two-day symposium being held in celebration of the Barbados Probation Service’s 80th anniversary at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre.
“Rehabilitation and reintegration must go hand in hand, and if we still have a punitive style in our justice system . . . we need to do better. Once that individual leaves the system to go back into society, they have to be able to function.
“If they’re not functioning or not being provided with the resources and the support system, the stigma is still there and employers don’t want to take them on,” he said.
Devonish, a professor of management and organisational behaviour at the Cave Hill Campus, said recidivism data showed that “many of them go back to a life of crime”.
He praised ARME, the Alliance for Reformed Minded Entrepreneurs, an organisation which assists formerly incarcerated individuals with reintegration into society, but also highlighted the need for stakeholders to invest in proper monitoring and evaluation of these individuals.
Despite volunteerism, “which is good”, he said, Government needed to follow up on what was needed in the rehabilitation programme.
“It is the only way to know if our programmes are working,” he said.
The forum, titled Modern Perspectives On Sentencing And Penal Reform, brought together personnel from the judiciary, Probation Department, Dodds Prison, National Council on Substance Abuse, Caribbean Development Bank and non-governmental organisations. (SD)
