7 News Belize

Kids See the Inside of A Prison And Hear Real Stories
posted (August 9, 2017)
We see their pictures, get footage of them when they are taken to court and follow their cases, but we don’t usually get to see what happens after convicts go to prison. We have an idea but it’s not the same like actually experiencing or hearing it from the inmates themselves. Well today, a group of Belmopan kids got a chance to confront the reality of life behind bars. Courtney Weatherburne went to the prison and has more details.

It’s another day in the wood work shop for these prisoners. Some are sanding a table they just built others are working on smaller wooden craft. But these inmates know how to do much more than just construction.

They know how to rear chickens and slaughter pigs. These are just a few activities that the prisoners can keep busy with on the compound. And of course, there is time for recreation. It might not seem too bad from the outside.

But when those cell doors close, the reality sets in.

Andrew Talbert - Inmate, Unlicensed Firearm
"I just want all of you all understand, jail is no bed of rose, jail hard."

And today, through a Belmopan police initiative, these 29 kids from Belmopan got to see just hard it is.

Sr. Sup. Howell Gillet - OC, Belmopan
"It doesn’t necessarily mean that they are trouble youths. They are young people who we believe we needed to show them firsthand what the life of a prisoner is and see what is occurring at our prison in Belize."

34 year old father of 5, Rennick Baiza knows what life behind bars is all about. He is spending 5 years for breach of protection order. He has only spent 14 months. Baiza, a former Corporal in the BDF, spiraled out of control when he started drinking â€" and it’s between the liquor and the abusive relationship he had with his ex-common law that landed him in prison. Now he wishes he could take it all back to be with his kids.

Rennick Baiza - Inmate
"The first time they come to visit me they had to visit me behind a glass prospect. My little daughter cried because she sees me right but she can't touch me, she can't hold me, she can't do nothing, that is the first time she came to visit, so prison is no bed of roses."

Calbert Young has also endured that pain of not being able to hold a loved one. He is in for 55 pounds of weed and he was slapped with a drug trafficking charge. He has to serve 8 years. And in that time a family member died and he never got to say goodbye.

Calbert Young - Inmate, Drug Trafficking
"I lost my mother on my time, the roughest thing that happened to me my mother came to visit me and like next month I the call home and I get no answer. My mother was already dead in the house for 3 days. 3 days meaning that her body already decomposed, when I get the phone call saying that your mother is dead, already in the house, already decomposed meaning that you need to go to funeral now. Now for me to see my mom last month in jail, come visit me and to have to go to a funeral without can't seeing her face because it's a close casket. Doing time still it was very rough for a person like me to get back from that."

And the conditions under which these prisoners live don’t make it any easier to cope.

Rennick Baiza
"You have a bread like this the size of a journey cake that you could eat in the morning and a little bigger one, little smaller than a creole bread that you could eat in the night. You no get any eggs here you understand me, you no get any sausage here, you understand me. You get a tea and what we call dry bread right."

Andrew Talbert
"Me like woman, once you are in jail no women are here you know, its lone men you see all day you understand, its lone men you see. You have to be smelling men fart you understand, you know what that is? It's a bad feeling, you know what it is to lie down in bed and a man fart, you smell that, you can't do nothing, you have to smell that."

Calbert Young
"Mr. Murrillo explain about the strip search, sometime I don't even want to come out here, I rather stay in back there with the way how we get searched."

And with that these kids, walked out of the prison gates â€" happy to be out of there and grateful for their freedom â€" hopefully none of them will return in shackles

We will have more on our visit to the prison in tomorrow’s newscast.




7News for Wednesday, August 9th, 2017 from 7News Belize on Vimeo.

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