Time for a Game Change / Correctional Preening & Screening

Oct 11, 2014 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
I read with some degree of awe the recent saga surrounding ex-prison officer Akeem Vyphuis, who was convicted for trafficking drugs inside the Georgetown Prison.
In truth and reality what truly peaked my interest was the dichotomy between his age and years of employment in the correctional services. Seemingly he started his career at the age of nineteen years. Need I delve further into his academic background, except to state that in this part of the diaspora, in addition to academic qualification, all correctional service entrants should possess post-secondary education in police studies, criminology or correctional services?
What then are the requirements of the correctional services in my Guyana Eldorado? Especially given the fact of exposing a nineteen-year-old to the ilk, genre and calibre of the occupants of the already overcrowded Georgetown Prison. Was any attention or even a passing glance paid to the psychosocial development of those who were in close and daily in contact with the most brutal, heinous and savage of our species, clinging limply to the title homo sapiens. .
Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development, as articulated by Erik Erikson, explain eight stages through which a healthily developing human should pass from infancy to late adulthood. In each stage, the person confronts, and hopefully masters, new challenges. Each stage builds upon the successful completion of earlier stages. The challenges of stages not successfully completed may be expected to reappear as problems in the future.
According to Erickson’s stages of development, Akeem was in late adolescence , a state which is fraught with its own issues. In adolescence, many people find that the tension between the internal forces of the self and the external forces of society is particularly high.
Erikson’s belief is that throughout each person’s lifetime, they experience different crises/conflicts. Each of the conflicts arise at a certain point in life and must be successfully resolved for progression to the next of the eight stages. The particular stage relevant to identity formation takes place during adolescence (ages 12-20), this stage is called “Identity versus Role Confusion”.
Better put, someone left the fox to guard the hen house after the fox declared he had become a vegan and was no longer interested in meat of any sort.
Akeem Vyphuis has been sentenced to 56 months, but this sentence should be accompanied by loud public calls for game change, employment revision, and better preening and screening of those who are hired to protect and serve. There should be continuous cries until the prisons rise for all to see, a place of incarceration for the misfits of society. Even the fact that the drug got inside the institution is a smack in the face of authorities.
Aleuta—The struggle continues.
Yvonne Sam

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