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The 38-year-old recording artiste, a father of 18, is now out on
$250,000 bail.
“I don’t know what my fate will be, but I cannot live
if I have to go to jail again,” he stated.
It was Starchild’s first experience ever behind bars and several
lessons were learnt.
“One of them is that the country is in crisis and that not
much is being done to help rehabilitate young offenders,”
he lamented.
“Crime is like a virus and it’s spreading.
“It’s affecting everyone.
“Imagine I left an entire family on Remand Yard, father, sons
and the mother across in the women’s prison.”
“What’s going on?” he asked.
He spoke of 16-year-olds “just about to turn 17” being
sent on Remand Yard among hardened criminals.
“There’s no more room, no breathing space,” he
added.
A concerned Starchild said because of the jolt he received when
he walked into “the prisons system”, he has put aside
his troubles just to add his voice to the concerns now being raised
about what’s taking place behind bars.
Like many others in the past, who have survived to tell their prison
story, Starchild painted a gloomy, troublesome picture.
He stated: “My checks revealed that Remand Yard caters for
450.
“When I went in just before Carnival, there were just over
900 people there.
“However, by the Thursday after Ash Wednesday, there were
1,750 prisoners on Remand Yard.
“God, how sick and inhumane it is.
“Too many men in one cell; you are waking and sleeping in
filth; one has to be careful how he twists and turns.
“The plastic bucket to urinate in and the gazette paper to
crap in have to stay watching you in the face till six o’clock
next morning.
“That’s too much to bear for one human being.
“The scent emanating from the waste ... that alone will make
you sick.”
Starchild recalled seeing a young man collapsing on being brought
into Remand Yard.
“It was too much for him; it’s really a scary situation,”
he deadpanned.
He said he, too, got a similar reaction when the gates were locked
behind him.
Starchild said he got an immediate toothache when he first entered
the jail system.
“First time I suffer high blood pressure,” he recalled.
“I got an immediate toothache, my blood pressure went high,
the vein in my head swell big …”
He added: “Trinidad and Tobago does not know what it breeding
right now.”
According to him, it was just hope that kept people alive.
“It’s not a hotel but things could be better,”
he insisted.
“The food; the conditions under which prisons must survive
are too terrible.”
He said it was even harder for Remand Yard prisoners who are not
yet convicted.
“As far as I am concerned, prisoners there are still innocent
because the courts have not yet proven their case,” he noted.
“Why should the treatment be even worse than those already
convicted?”
He described Remand Yard as a jail within a jail.
“You know you’re in jail, but Remand Yard is a jail
by itself,” he continued.
“It’s a dungeon, hell hole call it anything else but
a prison cell.
“You can’t even get breathing space…
“A prisoner cannot move.”
He said prisoners pray for “that one hour airing time and
when relatives come to visit”.
Starchild said the motto of some men in the system is “make
jail and doh bawl.
“They tell that mostly to the first time offenders, because
it gives them an opportunity recruit them.”
He also said that recent events in jail like the police raid and
the prisoners’ uprising was not a surprise to him.
“I saw them coming and I thank God I was not in there when
they happened,” he continued.
“I told some of the fellas in there that there is too much
tension in the prison and something bad will happen sooner or later.”
He said he also passed through Remand Yard at the Frederick Street
Prison.
“I didn’t stay there long but the conditions there are
no better,” he added.
Starchild felt that some prison officers along with Commissioner
John Rougier were doing the best they could under the situation.
He admitted that there were officers who tried to make the situation
as comfortable as possible.
“The government is the authority to ensure that the prison
conditions become humane and prisoners are rehabilitated,”
he insisted.
“The country is spending millions here, there and everywhere;
please pump some into the prisons before it’s too late,”
he begged.
Starchild’s matter continues in the Arima Magistrates’
Court.
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