Ex-inmate warns youth to stay out of prison

Ricardo* was just 15 when he was incarcerated for killing one of his schoolmates.

By the time he was freed, 10 and a half years had passed. He had lost his teenage years, the beginning of adulthood and the chance to grow up normally. But even as he speaks about the years prison took from him, he remembers his victim.

“I lost years, but he lost everything,” he said. “That is why I don’t like talking about it too much. Somebody dead. A youth like me, somebody weh go school like me, never get to grow up. That is one of the biggest regrets of my life.”

His reflections come amid renewed public discussion about former inmates lamenting years spent behind bars, including comments online by dancehall entertainers Vybz Kartel and Shawn ‘Shawn Storm’ Campbell, who have spoken about losing more than a decade of their lives in prison. Ricardo can relate.

“Anybody weh spend years in prison know what time mean,” he told THE WEEKEND STAR. “You come out and the world different. People different. You different.”

Ricardo began serving his sentence at the Rio Cobre Juvenile Correctional Centre in St Catherine. After turning 18, he was transferred to the Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre in Kingston, commonly called GP.

“As a juvenile, you already feel lost,” he said. “But when you reach adult prison, you realise this is serious life now. You have to grow up fast and yuh affi understand where you are.”

But he said the deepest punishment of prison was the way his own mind became an inescapable place.

“Prison nuh only hold you inna one likkle cell,” he said. “It hold you in yourself. And sometimes yourself is the hardest place fi stay.”

“Out here, time move and you busy. In there, time sit down beside you. Every birthday, every Christmas, every Mother’s Day, every little thing remind you say life a gwaan without you," he said. 

The nights were the most difficult as “You can distract yourself in the daytime”. 

“But when night come and the place quiet, a different thing. A you, God and your conscience, and conscience nuh easy fi sleep beside.”

He also said that prison will “shrink your mind if you not careful” as you “start forget certain parts of yourself”, like how free movement and normal conversations feel. 

Ricardo said he understands why the public demands harsh penalties, especially when families are left grieving.

“Crime hurt people. Murder destroy family,” he said. “If it was my family member, I would feel the same way too.”

Since his release, Ricardo said he has been trying to rebuild quietly. He keeps away from trouble, limits his circle and tries to speak to younger boys when he can. But reintegration, he said, is difficult for someone with a serious conviction.

“People tell you [to] change, but when you come out, nobody trust you,” he said. “Work hard to get. People look at you like you are still the same person. Sometimes you understand why, but it still hard.” Still, he said society does not owe him sympathy. He said he wanted young men to stop treating prison as a badge of honour.

“The road will hype you up, but when you gone a prison, you alone,” he said. “The friend them gone. The girl gone. The money gone. Your mother crying. And the person you hurt, their family never recover.”

*Name changed to protect identity