Former Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Paula Llewellyn never expected a wedding invitation from a former inmate she had encountered as a state witness.
When it came, she was surprised but accepted, despite staff members warning her not to attend.
“Miss Llewellyn, you can’t go. Don’t you see he was a criminal?” she recalled them telling her.
But Llewellyn had seen firsthand the power of a second chance and told them to “ calm down”.
Llewellyn was speaking at the 4th Annual Conference of the Association of Caribbean Heads of Corrections and Prison Services, where she used her encounters with former inmates to highlight the importance of rehabilitation, reintegration and stronger support for the correctional system.
The man was already serving a sentence for conspiracy to rob and kidnap when Llewellyn encountered him as a state witness in a murder trial. He had agreed to give evidence against two men accused of murdering a young couple.
The couple had been involved in a minor traffic accident with two men on a motorcycle. Rather than report the matter to the police, Llewellyn said, they tried to resolve it themselves, taking one of the men to hospital and later meeting the other to give him a crutch.
“When they went to give the crutch, other men bundled them into a car. They were driven up to a place up in the hills and never seen alive [again],” she recalled.
The young man, who had been the pillion passenger on the motorcycle, was later identified through CCTV footage after the couple’s credit card was used. He maintained that he had not been involved in the killings and had remained in the vehicle when the couple was taken away.
House firebombed
However, Llewellyn recalled that the pillion, after giving his evidence, suddenly changed his position and started “going back” on everything he had said.
Llewellyn said she went to the holding area at the Supreme Court to find out what had happened, where she learnt that his father’s house had been firebombed and that he was being threatened.
Police and corrections authorities were brought in, and arrangements were made to separate the witness from the accused and have him protected.
He eventually returned to court and gave what Llewellyn described as “excellent evidence”, helping to secure the convictions of the two men.
But her contact with the former inmate did not end when the trial was over.
His girlfriend began visiting Llewellyn for about a year. After visiting him in prison, she would stop by the former DPP’s office and show her his artwork.
“So, I got to know more about him through her eyes. He was a very talented artist,” she said. “He was a bright guy. He had been learning to be a chef when this happened. Bad company.”
When the man later sought early parole, Llewellyn agreed to the request of a probation officer to write about his assistance to the Crown – something she said she had never done before.
Six or seven months after his release, the former inmate and his girlfriend turned up at her office.
“They presented me with an invitation to their wedding.”
Llewellyn accepted.
The former inmate had returned to chef school, earned his certification, and had started a small business with his partner.
At the wedding, his mother, who lived abroad, embraced Llewellyn and thanked her for helping in her son’s transformation.
“I even ended up almost being like a godmother to the baby that they had,” Llewellyn said.
For Llewellyn, the experience offered a powerful reminder of the humanity of people behind prison walls.
“It showed to me the human face of some of these guys that are in your care,” she told correctional officials. “It is your responsibility to put things in place to give them the support to get the best out of them.”
And that was not her only memorable encounter with someone who had passed through the correctional system.
Years after dealing with another man in a gun case, Llewellyn said she was sitting at a traffic light on a Saturday morning without her bodyguards when she heard a voice.
“Miss Llewellyn, you remember me?”
She turned and saw a man selling copies of The Gleaner.
“You did prosecute me, y’know, fi a gun crime,” he reminded her.
Llewellyn said she told him she did not remember, but asked him what he had been doing with himself. He responded that he was selling copies of The Gleaner and trying to better himself.
The man also told her: “Miss Llewellyn, mi know say you prosecute hard, but you fair.”
She thanked him and encouraged him to stay on the straight and narrow.
Llewellyn further recalled encountering an inmate whose impressive talent for painting was discovered while he was serving time for illegal possession of a firearm and robbery.
She had stumbled upon an exhibition and was impressed by the quality of the paintings before learning that the artist was an inmate.
When she was told he was sitting outside in a vehicle, she asked that he be brought inside and his face lit up as they discussed his work.
Llewellyn said correctional officers had provided him with the tools to develop his talent. Months later, he sent her a handmade card decorated with petals from a tree, and later painted her portrait.
The man was eventually granted early parole, but later returned to the institution.
“So I thought to myself, ‘Well, obviously the mental needs [ought] to be dealt with’,” Llewellyn said. “Reintegration was a challenge in his community and perhaps he felt safest being back there.”
The experiences reinforced Llewellyn’s support for greater investment in corrections, including modern facilities, rehabilitation, reintegration and training.
She said she was pleased that the correctional system was finally receiving greater attention and resources and was no longer being treated as the “Cinderella” of Government.
Historically, she said, spending on corrections was not politically attractive because taxpayers often questioned why public money should be spent on prisoners.
But, she argued, the public must understand that inmates eventually return to society.
“People are starting to connect the dots,” she said.
She urged correctional authorities to also communicate more effectively about the positive work taking place inside the institutions.
“You can’t keep the great things that you are doing a secret,” Llewellyn said. “You have to let people know, so that perceptions can change.”
For correctional officers, she said, the responsibility goes beyond keeping inmates behind bars.
“At the heart of the corrections architecture are the citizens who are in your care,” she said, urging officers to protect inmates’ human dignity while maintaining security, facilitating rehabilitation and preparing them to return to society.
She also challenged correctional leaders to build institutions that can thrive beyond their tenure.
“Your greatest legacy is how well it will be doing when you have left,” Llewellyn said.
tanesha.mundle@gleanerjm.com
