Staff at the Boys Training Centre (BTC) are fighting to change public perceptions of the facility, which they say unfairly label the boys as criminals and overlook rehabilitation successes.
BTC has ramped up staff training, helped the young residents heal trauma within their families, and given them the opportunity to further their education and even become entrepreneurs.
Currently, 40 per cent of residents are preparing for the Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Caribbean Vocational Qualification (TVET CVQ) – a recognised regional standard – in welding, officials told St Lucia Times. Additionally, a vast majority of former residents who participated in the centre’s growing aftercare programme have remained on a positive path.
Still, stigma remains one of the biggest hurdles for the boys.
Manager of the centre, Leanna Wallace argues that society singles out BTC boys when they encounter legal trouble while ignoring offenders from other backgrounds.
“If we go to the Bordelais Correctional Facility today,” she said, “wouldn’t you get [past students] from St Joseph’s Convent, St Mary’s College, and every single secondary school that exists in Saint Lucia? Yes! You don’t hear people say ‘past Castries Comprehensive Student is now a prisoner at Bordelais’… but when it’s a BTC child, the first thing is ‘former BTC ward’; that’s not nice.”
“You have children going to school who feel embarrassed because they live
here,” Wallace added. Schoolmates see them stepping off the BTC bus and
whisper, ‘All the fellas over there kill the kids….’ You make them feel bad.”
Welding instructor Vincent Samuel, with 25 years at BTC, emphasises its rehabilitative mission. “This is not a prison. We teach skills to prepare boys to give back to society.”
People believe the residents are just “dumped in a hole,” he said, but many now run businesses or are employed.
The push comes alongside reforms by the Ministry of Equity, Social Justice and Empowerment, which reviewed BTC’s operations after a January 2023 incident involving a runaway ward accused of murder.
Minister Joachim Henry reports that 65 per cent of staff have received training – 60 per cent specifically in trauma-informed care – and absenteeism has dropped.
The ministry has budgeted $167 000 for facility upgrades and plans to relocate the BTC to the refurbished George Charles Secondary School, pending possible funding from the Caribbean Development Bank.
Henry insists that 83 per cent of aftercare participants are “exemplary citizens”.
BTC staff say their work is not easy but rewarding, and the boys deserve more than a stigma.
Also see Inside BTC: Changing the story of boys in State care (Part 2)
