Category Archives: News

https://hawaiifriends.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Iceland-reentry-approach-Erla-Árnadóttir-2023.pdf

by Lorenn Walker December 2022

Mr. Ramoutar was Acting Commissioner of Prisons, Trinidad Tobago, at the time of the interview.

Introduction:

Right before this interview was recorded Commissioner Ramoutar was asked: “What do you think prisons need the most?”
He replied “love.”
Deoersad Ramoutar:

Name is Deoersad Ramoutar. I am the Acting Commissioner of Prisons of Trinidad Tobago Prison Service. I am approximately 10 years in office, but I have 34 years in the service and still going strong.

I joined this service in 1988 as a basic grade officer and worked my way to the top. Whilst in the system… Well out of the system I didn’t care much about prisoners, I just cared for a salary and a permanent job. Unfortunately for me, when I got that, I had some life changing moments in my life by-

Lorenn:

Can I ask what they were?

Deoersad Ramoutar:

Interacting with inmates and hearing their life stories and realize that in fact there is one inmate, godson Neptune. God bless his soul, he has passed on. He and I had regular conversations, mature conversations, and he inspired me to do studies to get back.

Lorenn:

He inspired you to go back to college?

Deoersad Ramoutar:

Yes. Yes. He himself was one of the most educated person in the system. He was a top executive at a particular company and he was charged for murder of his wife and he came in the system.

Lorenn:

Yes.

Deoersad Ramoutar:

So in that point of being high, he-

Lorenn:

Killed her.

Deoersad Ramoutar:

Yeah, he killed her. Yes. So come back to introducing myself.

Lorenn:

He inspired you to go to college?

Deoersad Ramoutar:

Yes. Yes.

Lorenn:

And the inmates and the guards both?

Deoersad Ramoutar:

Yes.

Lorenn:

You could talk to both?

Deoersad Ramoutar:

Yes. So I focus my studies into social work counseling. I studied sociology, psychology, criminology. Actually, social work is an elective discipline where you need to study all other

disciplines and make yourself a good social worker. So having done that, I got caught up in it. I enjoyed that type of work. So I was enjoying my work as a hobby. It became a hobby working. So I wasn’t working a day in my life.

Lorenn:

You love your work?

Deoersad Ramoutar:

Yeah, I love my work. Happy with my salary. First doing something I love to do. And then when you help someone, when you really help someone and they thank you for that, show gratitude, that gives you a better feeling than your salary.

Lorenn:

Spend money.

Deoersad Ramoutar:

I have tried to, instill my thoughts and my perception of life onto inmates, officers, mostly the inmates. Because as a colleague you may not get all that privilege of what you’re worth because you will be competing for the same position in work. You’ll be become competing for authority.

So the inmates would really see who we are. Inmates would gravitate towards me for advice counseling and I would easily control them, just with my words. So that was a plus for me. So I joined the department, known as the Welfare Department in Prison Service where my social work experience allowed me to do social work for the inmates because the regular run-of-the- mill guard can’t do that. Cannot do that. Cannot be too interactive with inmates and your home families and so on. It could lead to corruption.

Lorenn:

But the social worker can?

Deoersad Ramoutar:

A social worker can.

Lorenn:

And you were a social worker?

Deoersad Ramoutar:

Trained, unemployed.

Lorenn:

Okay.

Deoersad Ramoutar:

Because the prison has a opportunity for the guard to become a social worker and we call that welfare officer. Got so much deeply involved in the humanistic approach. In treatment people I decided to really further myself into this discipline. So I went on to do restorative justice, mediation.

My prior commissioners were trained mostly in security and they did an excellent job in security. I suppose rehabilitating someone is the most difficult job. You have to be really patient. You have to care. So the easier thing to do was security. I’m up for the challenge. Now I’m faced with a quality of change. I might come across sometime to my staff and colleagues as being too soft. But it’s not soft, it’s planting a seed.

Lorenn:

They think you’re soft.

Deoersad Ramoutar:

Yes. At times I have to let them know I am not.

Lorenn:

Right.

Deoersad Ramoutar:

For the 10 months I’m here I think it’s working. I’ve developed two watch words, respect and performance. And I tell you, I say to my inmates and to my staff, do everything you do with respect, be respectful. And I think everything under the sun will be good if you do everything you do under those respectful and do your job.

I have two other watch words for 2023, motivation and empowerment. I think that inmates who come to our system are broken men and women, really broken psychologically, spiritually, mentally.

We have trained trainers programs, so they’re now to go out and have classroom settings with my inmates and deal with their emotions more than anything else. This is so much more exciting dealing the human psyche, as opposed to just locking up in a cell, allowing you to eat, have your dinner, your lunch, your breakfast, have a bath and go back in your cell. That’s boring.

Lorenn:

And what are you most proud of, you accomplished?

Deoersad Ramoutar:

I think the inmates, they love what you do. And you feel lucky they may love you afterwards and then they will start to love the other officers going down the road. I just came from a program down at South in Clarkson where we have the elderly population. We are treating them differently. I’m allowing their grandchildren, because they’re in system with us 30, 35 years now and building their self-esteem. They were self for self-worth. I’m allowing family visits because we never had that before to the equality I’m having now. I’m allowing them to walk with a picnic basket. So they’re around a table having picnic with their food, home cooked food for their inmate’s family.

They’re tearful when they enjoying program. So the children, they cry before they leave, they don’t want to leave. Try to give you a sense that I appreciate you. I try to have more monitoring taking place so when someone feels they’re being monitored, what they’re doing are being scrutinized, they feel cared for. And they respond better. And if your work was not being of acknowledge or appreciated, you are less motivated to repeat it.

And if I, through my managers, we show you appreciation what you do, not just for the prisons but for the country, that what works.

Lorenn:

Tell me, have you done any restorative justice practices in here or do you have plans?

Deoersad Ramoutar:

Hundreds, hundreds of situation instances. I’m removing the bullseye target from my officers. So try not to kill my officers anymore. Someone asked me where are you going to put it? Where are you going to put this bullseye? Is it only police? Is it only judiciary? Is it the businessman? No, I’m going to put it on the mirror that the inmate is looking to. The man in the mirror, is where you are going to-

Lorenn:

Make a choice.

Deoersad Ramoutar:

… put that bulls eye [on you], because you are the one that put yourself here.

Hawai‘i Friends of Restorative Justice (HFRJ) is hosting a series of online workshops that will address how public systems can better serve citizens with thoughtful planning and action. Among the planned topics: education, administration of justice, and child welfare. Proceeds from the series will support HFRJ’s work to provide higher education for imprisoned women.

The upcoming workshops will feature internationally renowned speakers who will address these issues in an interactive format including smaller breakout sessions that will allow participants to discuss the issues and ways they can promote positive systemic changes in their communities.

Please sign up for our newsletter and return to this page for updates on the series, including workshop dates and speakers.

Our first workshop is June 9, 2020 with Ellen Langer, PhD., psychology professor, Harvard University, who describes her work as the “psychology of possibility.” The workshop will begin at 2:30 pm and end at 4:00 pm Eastern Time. Dr. Langer is considered the mother of mindfulness, having researched the topic for over forty years. Among her other honors, she is the recipient of four Distinguished Scientist Awards and the Liberty Science Genius Award. For more about Dr. Langer’s innovative and creative work please see: https://scholar.harvard.edu/langer/biocv

Our second workshop is planned for July 28, 2020 and will feature Shadd Maruna, PhD, author of Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives. Professor Maruna who teaches at Manchester University in Ireland is considered one of the foremost experts in desistance and how people stay law abiding and clean and sober after imprisonment.

How Higher Education Prevents Recidivism & Domestic Violence

Research has shown that higher education prevents repeat crime. Becoming educated makes recidivism significantly less likely.[1] We have worked with several women formerly incarcerated at the Women’s Community Correctional Center (WCCC) over the years who have gone on to complete graduate school. Today we are proud that Daphne Ho‘okano is on our board of directors.[2]Daphne spent many years engaging in substance abuse and in prison but went on to obtain a masters degree in social welfare. Today she is a child protective investigator for the state of Hawai‘i.

Higher education empowers women, and empowered women are more successful at staying out of abusive relationships. “There is an inverse relationship between education and domestic violence. Lower education levels correlate with more likely domestic violence” (Huecker & Smock, 2019).[3]

Domestic and intimate violence against women (DV) is a terrible problem all over the world including Hawai‘i. At least 50 thousand women a year are murdered by partners because of DV, and in the US 50 women a month are shot to death. While DV has been a consistent problem for ages, research published earlier this year shows it is increasing nationally.[4] In 2017 six Hawai’i women were murdered in DV cases, and in 2019 there were three reported murder suicides in our state. Most imprisoned women in Hawai‘i have been exposed to DV in their lifetimes.

Rachel Louise Snyder’s No Visible Bruises underscores the need for increased DV prevention. HFRJ is motivated to prevent DV by providing higher education programs for imprisoned women. Snyder, a professor at American University in Washington DC and a former correspondent for NPR, studied DV for ten years. She notes that women all over the world who are in DV relationships share a commonality: They each suffer a “lack of agency.” (Agency is an individual’s ability to understand that she has choices to direct her life.) Higher education will provide imprisoned women with a sense of agency and other assets that can lead them to more positive life courses.

 Success Stories

Daphne Ho‘okano: since 2010, after being released from prison, Daphne earned a certificate in substance abuse counseling. She went on to the University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Manoa and received a bachelor’s degree in social work in 2017. In 2018 she earned her Master’s of Social Work from UH Manoa. Today, Daphne works as a child protection social work investigator and administers the Beacon of Hope House to support women transitioning to the community from prison and furlough programs. She is also a board member of Hawai‘i Friends of Restorative Justice.

Curtis Carroll: Mr. Carroll shows that no matter what your education level profound learning can occur for anyone in prison. Mr. Carroll learned to read in prison at age 20 and twenty years later he is a proponent of financial literacy and an expert on the stock market. His nickname is “Wall Street.” Here is his inspiring story shared on a 2017 TED TALK: https://www.ted.com/talks/curtis_wall_street_carroll_how_i_learned_to_read_and_trade_stocks_in_prison?language=en

---

^[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/23282764.pdf?seq=1

^[2] https://hawaiifriends.org/download/hawaii-reentry-legal-resource-guide/

^[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499891/

^[4] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/domestic-violence-murders-rising_n_5cae0d92e4b03ab9f24f2e6d?0kk    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/us/domestic-violence-victims.html