Claudia Gardner, Gleaner Writer

LUCEA, Hanover:

PRESIDENT OF the Hanover Chamber of Commerce (HCoC), Theo Chambers, says the nation's attempts to curtail crime will continue to reap little success unless a concerted effort is made to properly educate and train prisoners to readjust into society.

Mr. Chambers told The Gleaner recently that, too often, prisoners leave prison worse off than they were before they were incarcerated.

"I think we have lost our focus on not emphasising education and training in prison," Mr. Chambers said. "We cannot allow prisoners to come out and we say they are on their own. We are the cause of many of the crimes taking place because we are not preparing our prisoners to readjust into society when they come back out, and not to go back into the criminal environment."

He added: "A drastic change is needed. It is important that the Government and private sector realise the urgency to have in prison, educational programmes to give hope to people locked up behind bars. We must admit that unless that person gets a life sentence, that person is coming back on the street and if you don't impart training to give that person hope, he is going to go back to what he knows best (crime)."

Mr. Chambers said more emphasis ought to be placed on the root causes of crime, as well as investments in programmes aimed at tackling social problems, instead of heavy investment in weapons.

"We will never get rid of crime if we refuse to get rid of the environment which is creating these criminals," he said. "You can kill criminals all day long, but if the manufacturing plant that creates those criminals remains intact 100 per cent, then you will be killing criminals for the rest of your life."

He added: "We need to go into the inner-cities and transform the conditions that are creating the criminal mentality. But, we are not focused there. We want more guns and more police officers. To do what? We need to go to the source of the problem."