One pastor is heeding the calls of the Prime Minister and Police Commissioner to get back into the communities and reclaim the youth from the claws of criminals.
Pastor Ramsarran Persad is doing so openly after spending over two decades of his life behind bars.
“Twenty-three years of my life, that’s 23 years of my life, have been wasted. I can let young people know that prison is not a nice place to be. What I met there, what I saw there, what I experienced there, I will not encourage even my worst enemy to be in a place like inside there,” Persad said in an interview.
Persad, of Rio Claro, was arrested in 1997 for attempted murder and spent most of his sentence at the Carrera Convict Prison.
There, he earned 25 certificates but said he would exchange them all if he could go back to the day when he made the decision that landed him in prison.
He said, “I am very, very sorry for the incident I got myself involved in and I want to take the initiative at this time to tell the victim that I am sorry for what had went on. I am sorry. If I can change back the time to bring it back to where the incident took place, I am willing to do that.”
Ramsarran believes that by sharing his experience, young people may choose a different, more positive path.
“The very first night I went to prison, I slept on the very floor. My bed was a newspaper, my pillow was my shoes. I couldn’t sleep that night and when I got up that morning, what they call for diet, which is food, I wanted to use the washroom. When I went to use the washroom, it was not what we were accustomed to at home, it was a toilet bowl cast with concrete and everybody using it one after the next without flushing, so you could imagine the thing piling up inside there,” he said.
And while his surroundings were deplorable, the now reformed prisoner said the experience affected him mentally as well.
He thanked all the inmates, prison officers and religious leaders who assisted and prayed with him while he was incarcerated and helped him rehabilitate when he was released.
Ramsarran said he now wants to do his part to help with this country’s rise in criminality and said he is open to any religious leader willing to invite him to give his testimony. He can be contacted at 263-9086.
“It is my heart’s desire to share my testimony,” he said.
He said he wanted the nation’s youth to know that the Trinidadian proverb, “Fren’ does carry yuh but doh bring yuh back,” has some truth behind it and encouraged them to think before they do something bad enough to land them behind bars.
