Inmate turned prison officer defends appointment
Audrey Matura may be departing as editor of the Guardian, but her final days on the job have not been timid. The headline in today’s issue dropped the bombshell that the man recently hired to supervise the maximum-security section of Hattieville Prison is himself a former inmate of a U.S. prison. This afternoon News Five contacted the officer in question, Kevin Cadle, who has made no secret of his arrest for drugs in California when he was seventeen and subsequent deportation back to Belize in 1997. What The Guardian failed to mention, however, was that one of Cadle’s first employers back home, was the UDP government’s Conscious Youth Development Programme, where he counseled young gang members to renounce their violent ways. Cadle later worked with YEA in Ladyville before moving to his present post at Hattieville a month and a half ago. While he makes no bones about his past, Cadle says that he’s an example that rehabilitation is possible.
Kevin Cadle, Prison Officer
“I am a human being and we all make mistakes sometime in life. Yes I made a mistake when I was a young kid in The United States of America, growing on my own on the streets of South Central Los Angeles. Yes it happened. I did go to jail. I did spend my time. I came home and I am really trying to do something positive for my Belizean people, especially youths who have been deported from the States.”
“First of all, the thing that makes me feel a little bit uneasy of the fact that I am being attacked for being in the position that I am in is that number one, I understand these guys more than anybody can understands them because I have been in there position, that’s the key to it. Second behind that, are we saying that in our country when you come home deported or when you commit a crime you are not to be given a second chance in society in order to rehabilitate yourself? I think I have learnt a lot in the United States of America. I studied under a psychologist named Dr. E.M. Abdul Muhmeem, who is a renounced psychologists in the state of California, who taught me a lot dealing with criminology, prison management, the penal system etcetera.”
“I feel that right now I know a lot about the system that I am working in, in order to help my country. What if one of these days these guys get out of prison, and I am not there or nobody is there to help the situation, what would then happen? I feel that at my present state, I could understand the guys who are being deported from the Unites States. I know what they are thinking most of the time, I know where they hide their weapons most of the time, I know what their plans are most of the time, and every time they make a move, I turn back around and make another move.”
While incarcerated in California’s Herman G. Stark Youth Training School, Cadle worked in the institution’s vocational rehabilitation section. He is currently studying part time at the University of Belize and expects to receive an associates degree in social work in May of next year.
