Separate teams comprising Bordelias Correctional Facility (BCF) officers and inmates are down to participate in a futsal tournament commencing on Independence Day.
The BCF expects that the tournament commencing on February 22 this year will run for six months and include teams from outside the facility.
The Safe Spaces initiative is collaborating with the BCF to host the event.
Sixteen correctional facility teams, made up of ten players each, are down to participate in the activity.
They include teams comprising male officers, a female correctional officers team, male inmate teams and one team of female inmates.
According to a BCF release, the tournament is part of the institution’s rehabilitation efforts in line with a 27-point plan of its recently appointed Director, Verne Garde.
The institution said it would work with Safe Spaces to promote the ‘one love’ agenda in Saint Lucia, culminating in reformed inmates and a reduction in instances where prisoners return to a life of crime.
Are the inmates who are serving life for murder and others for equally dangerous crime be allowed to play openly? if so doesn’t that make a mockery of the whole idea of being locked up? if yes, next move let them play in open competition and get payed.
This is a great initiative and I throw my support in for the BCF organizers. If we create the concept of safe space, then it is good. It will give those who have made the mistakes that causes them to be there to rethink how sweet the outside world and freedom can be if you think positive and if you think less to harm someone. Remember your enemies are weaker than you so never reduce yourself to your enemy’s standard otherwise you reduce yourself to their level.