I’ve lost count of the times I’ve unashamedly borrowed from Paul Theroux the following wise words from his book on V.S. Naipaul, entitled Sir Vidia’s Shadow: “It is a good thing that time is light, because so much is mumbling shadows and the future is just silence and darkness. But time passes by, time’s torch illuminates, it finds connections, it makes sense of confusion, it reveals truth. And you hardly know the oddness of life until you have lived a little. Then you get it. You are older, looking back. For a period, you understand and can say: ‘I see it all clearly. I remember everything.’ ”
My first meeting with Marius Wilson was accidental. Since my return to Saint Lucia after more than two decades resident in the United States, I’d heard quite a lot about him, nearly all of it referencing his intelligence, his wit, his movie-star smile, his gift of the gab that made him a magnet for female attention. So, what a pleasure to meet him on that long ago early afternoon when I had reason to call on Dane Hamilton at his office in the Parliament building. A native Antiguan, Hamilton was at the revisited time well on his way to establishing his reputation as this country’s most effective Director of Public Prosecutions.
Wilson had only recently been called to the local Bar. On the occasion of our first meeting, he was holding the fort in Hamilton’s absence. It emerged he was very much a fan of my work—of my coverage of local trials, especially. (Typically, my reports included not only the more hilarious aspects of heated exchanges between the opposing attorneys but also the often salacious sotto-voce comments from the public gallery, who wore what, who had broken down under cross-examination, kwéyòl references to female genitalia—in regular circumstances considered “obscene language” and punishable by law.) When I bumped into Dane Hamilton several days later at a popular Gros Islet watering hole, he proudly informed me the young man I’d met at his office was his intern, destined soon to be this island’s most in-demand lawyer.
Alas, it was as a calypso composer and politician (we need not argue over his reputed prowess under the sheets!) that Marius Wilson first made his mark. On at least two occasions I was the subject of his carnival-time compositions—one related to my journalistic curiosity, entitled “Rick Is a CIA!” We sat for a time on the opposition side of the Senate before he switched loyalties and successfully ran for office in 2001 under the torch symbol of the United Workers Party. From December that year to January 2003, he was Leader of the Opposition. On this particular outing I wish to concentrate on Wilson’s contributions to the Senate debates that preceded the 1997 passing of the Parole Bill, as well as the amendments to the Criminal Code that permitted the controversial imposition of heavier fines and longer sentences for certain offences.
But first, let us hear from the Leader of Government Business in the Senate, Mr. Calixte George, also a government minister. By his peculiar measure, the Parole Bill sought “to facilitate the rehabilitation of prisoners and to provide them with what is commonly referred to as a second chance.” It was also intended to be a correctional device, “a device whereby persons who have been incarcerated for periods of about twelve months or more would be entitled [sic] to parole.” Inmates were expected to “correct some of their deviant behavior during the period of parole, and so it is some form of reintroduction of the criminal into the society so that he becomes more or less reintegrated in the society.”
As for candidate eligibility, Senator George announced that would be up to a board with the power to grant or revoke parole. “There is a section of the bill,” he went on, somewhat vaguely, “that deals with the powers of the board in respect of parole applications, parole hearings and so on.”
As he explained it, parole was also intended, “more or less, to reduce the number of persons we have at the facility over the bridge [a euphemistic reference to the once notorious prison on Bridge Street], so to speak, because, as you know, the number of persons in there is about five to six times what it should be. There are other features of the bill that I would commend, and they are in respect of the involvement of the community. It tries to connect the community with the crime. This is a very commendable bill.”
A dozy citizen in the public gallery might easily have formed the impression that the Leader of Government Business had received his papers only minutes before the session got underway. Or that he had spent little time researching the complex subject of parole.
Three other senators spoke on the bill before Marius Wilson rose to his feet. The first expressed concern that there was no provision in the document for the effective supervision of parolees. He also noted that there was nothing in relation to employment as part of the reintegration process. The second said that although the bill did not address the matter, he had “taken for granted that the powers that be have taken appropriate steps to ensure the proper structures are in place to ensure efficiency as far as the parole process is concerned.” He complained that the minister in charge of the crime portfolio had been given too much authority in his interactions with the parole board.
“When I hear statements by government ministers over the media,” he said, “it seems to me sometimes that some of us are unaware of the rampant victimization in this country. I would like to place on record that the rate of victimization in Saint Lucia is such that if the minister was allowed to perform the role as stated in the bill it would further perpetuate victimization in some circles.”
He suggested the authority given the minister under the bill be taken back and transferred “to the judiciary.”
The lone female senator considered the bill timely, in that it provided opportunity for people to be “sort of rehabilitated.” It represented “a humanitarian effort to allow inmates to readjust and to fit into the society.” But ours was “a very judgmental society, a very small society,” she reminded her colleagues, “and it is no secret that those who have served time are known as jailbirds.” She, too, “hoped” the proper support mechanisms were in place.
Marius Wilson established from the get-go where he stood. “I want it recorded that I am totally and absolutely against this bill. Not the principle of parole per se,” he said, “but I am most definitely against the introduction of this legislation in Saint Lucia at this particular time.” He acknowledged the “noble intentions” of the Home Affairs Minister who had introduced the bill at an earlier session of the lower House, but then Wilson also declared the minister “a charlatan.”
He elaborated: “The government that calls itself the government of the St. Lucia Labour Party—not the government of Saint Lucia—is obviously confused. On the one hand legislation is being proposed to increase fines, sentences and other penalties, but at the same time you place before the Senate this Parole Bill, its main intention being to alleviate, as the Leader of Government Business acknowledged in his introduction, the over-crowded conditions at Her Majesty’s Prisons. This bill has obviously not been given much consideration. Little thought has been given the supporting services that must go hand in hand with parole.”
He repeated himself: “I cannot support this bill at a time when people are being shot in broad daylight, when there are bombings and armed robberies and reports of arson and rape all over the country.” He cited several unresolved reports of crimes against women and children.
“There is absolutely no system in place for the rehabilitation of offenders,” he roared. “The government’s way of dealing with congestion at the prison is to return the worst of the repeat offenders to our streets. I suggest that before the government talks about parole, let us see the initiating of some kind of rehabilitative system at our prisons, a system to get criminals reoriented, to encourage them to engage in meaningful alternatives to crime.”
He recalled a fire at the country’s main prison just days after the 1997 elections. “It is passing strange,” he mused, “that in the absence of the support services I earlier mentioned, a consultancy service was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to investigate the cause of the fire, predictably to little avail. But not one cent has the government spent on the introduction of a program of rehabilitation at the prison. And now, here comes the bluff bill that is nothing but a tool to reduce the overwhelming number of inmates, none of them having undergone any form of remedial therapy.”
Finally: “We are now saying to offenders, ‘We are going to make a law that will allow you to serve only one-third of your given sentence, once it exceeds twelve months.’ Well, I say that if this new Labour Party government is to survive, if it is not to betray the hopes and aspirations of the people who recently gave them such an overwhelming mandate, if it is to avoid causing the people’s confidence to dissipate, then it must not give in to criminal elements. The government must do what is in the best interests of both the general population and the parolees. There can be no development without peace, order and stability. Crime is a direct threat to the orderly development of any country.”
Not for want of trying, I’ve been unable to discover what followed the passing of the Parole Bill into law, save that some 22 years after it entered our statute books the Saint Lucia government had engaged Correctional Service Canada, responsible in that country for managing institutions of various security levels and supervising offenders under conditional release in the community. By informed account CSC was required to set up for Saint Lucia a local parole program and provide training to a parole board chaired by the director of Bordelais Correctional Center, which has never operated as an institution for rehabilitating inmates, its name notwithstanding!
In March 2020 the parole board convened its first meeting, at which two inmates were declared fit for release. Both had been sentenced to death for separate murders, later commuted to life behind bars. At its second meeting in December of the same year, the board paroled another inmate. Like the earlier two, his death sentence for murder had been reduced to lifetime in prison. Relatives of the murder victims reportedly attended the parole hearings and had no objection to the board’s decision. All personal details regarding the parolees remain classified. A related government communique suggested to do otherwise would be unfair to the freed killers and counterproductive.
It may serve at this point to remind our officially acknowledged “very judgmental society” of another killer who was spared the hangman’s rope and then quietly released in 1995, after two decades at the Bridge Street abomination that a visiting British MP had famously renamed “another black hole of Calcutta that should be dynamited out of existence.” Egregious overcrowding at the prison was the excuse eventually given by the “Mercy Committee” for setting the inmate free—and only after he had brutally raped and murdered a female employee of a local accounting firm. With no knowledge of his history, the native Dominican had invited her own horrid demise when she hired the psycho to mow her grass lawn. (The Prerogative of Mercy committee was at the time chaired by Prime Minister John Compton, who was under much pressure from the media and the campaigning Labour Party for the inhumane conditions as the prison!)
In the UK, parolees are referred to as ”inmates out on license.” The stated aim of a period on license is to protect the public, to prevent re-offending and to secure the successful reintegration of the individual back into the community. The license conditions are not a form of punishment and must be considered “necessary and proportionate.” Necessary means that the condition is necessary to manage the risks identified, and no other less restrictive condition will be enough. Proportionate means that the restriction or loss of liberty because of the license condition is proportionate to the level of risk presented by the individual. (The emphasized lines were lifted from the UK Parole Board’s website.)
All Parole Board release decisions in the UK contain a set of standard conditions, including: No behavior that undermines the purpose of the license period is permitted. Staying in touch with the supervising officer in accordance with instructions by the supervising officer is a must, as is receiving visits from the supervising officer in accordance with instructions given by the supervising officer. Residence must be permanent at an address approved by the supervising officer. The individual under license may only engage in work approved by the supervising officer and associate only with approved individuals. There are also curfew arrangements and random drug-testing. Victims of crimes committed by inmates out on license can request to vary or add license conditions. (Similar conditions apply in the United States.)
Before the conclusion of the recalled 1997 Senate sitting, Marius Wilson also addressed “the dramatic increase in the penalties proposed by the government, especially in relation to crimes against children.” He posed the question: “Is your policy toward crime rehabilitative or punitive?” Along the way, Wilson recalled that when the Home Affairs Minister was a magistrate, he had strongly pursued the idea of flogging law breakers in the public square. “Thankfully,” said Wilson, “good sense prevailed.”
He cited the mirage that crime in Saint Lucia was committed exclusively by the poor, most of whom, he observed, could not pay a $200 fine, except in installments. “How then will they pay when that fine is increased to $1,000 and they are jobless. One consequence of increasing fines and sentences will be an exacerbation of the congestion problem at our prison. I suggest that increasing penalties and fines will create more headaches for the government and the people. The idea needs to be taken back to the drawing board.”
He went on: “I suggest the government would do much better looking at the administration of justice, in particular Saint Lucia’s criminal courts that are about to come to a grinding halt. I believe the functioning of the justice system must be looked at carefully. Increasing fines and penalties is not the answer to our crime and justice problems.”
Alas, this already depressing story must end on still another regrettable note: Marius Wilson, of whom so much was expected despite his known proclivities, was in 2021 sentenced to five years in prison, a jury having found him guilty of firearms-related charges. It is conjectural whether he’ll be required to serve full sentence. Local judges never speak of parole from the bench!
Rick thank you for this story, albeit a sad one. Btw do you thing there is a chance that the brilliant mind of Marius Wilson can be persuaded to write about his experience and the justice system as a whole . He now can speak to all of it .