Stop sending fathers to jail for failing to support their children financially!
This appeal was made yesterday by Independent Senator Orlando Marville who maintains that those fathers should be made to do community service for money that would be paid directly toward their children’s support.
Marville told the Senate that sending men to prison on such grounds struck him as “the greatest of absurdities”.
While the important thing should be the availability of funds for the children, once the father was jailed there was “no money coming back” to the family, he pointed out.
In an interview afterwards, Marville offered the community service solution.
“If you put him (the father) in jail, then he can’t work and then you have to pay for it,” he said. “It’s a double defeat.”
During debate on the Penal System Reform (Amendment) Bill, 2010, the senator said he was worried that so many young people were ending up in prison, robbing the country of productivity.
Pointing out that sometimes the artistic talents of those people were discovered only after they went to prison, he suggested some changes to the schools’ curricula to correct this problem.
Marville also called for schools to teach anger management – how children could resolve problems “without getting mad, without getting angry”.
He said in the interview that this could help Barbados “eliminate large areas of crime”. Marville also said that some teachers “need to go through anger management classes”. (TY)
