Businesses need to hire ex-convicts

At least one prison official is advocating for ex-convicts, calling for businesses to hire them as a way to break the cycle of crime in the community.

Walter Barrett, Rehabilitation Coordinator at His Majesty’s Prison, used the recent launch of the Anti-Crime Summit and Youth Rally to issue a passionate plea for the territory to stop shutting out people who have already paid their debt to society.

“For those of us who have business places — stop shutting down people because they were in prison,” Barrett told the gathering. “You need to give people an opportunity to get reintegrated into society the right way. If you keep telling them no, you are actually pushing them to end up in prison again. They’re going to find a way to survive.”

Barrett described crime as a formula where “opportunity plus threat equals crime,” stressing that not all offences are committed by hardened criminals. “Everybody that commits a crime is not a criminal. Some are driven by circumstances and threats they felt forced to confront,” he said.

His remarks come as the BVI faces a worrying surge in serious crime, including murders, gun violence, and gang-related activity. Police have repeatedly raised alarms about the increasing involvement of young people, some barely in their teens, in criminal acts.