“It is a very small island and that means that all kinds of criminals are together. From murderers to people who have committed shoplifting, and everyone knows each other. If you have done something bad, everyone knows it immediately,” says Ewout in the start of the episode. To get a good idea of the interior, he has himself ‘locked up’ there for three days.
At one point, Ewout talks to a detainee who is incarcerated for threats and assault. He has had two tears tattooed on his face, to which Ewout asks: “If you have injured someone but not killed someone, then the tears are like that (not colored in, ed.).”
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When asked if he expects he will ever color them again, the prisoner says: “Yes. (…) You are young and you do crazy things.” Then a guard walks by and takes a knife and fork from the pocket of the prisoner Ewout is talking to. He says he needs those weapons to protect himself.
And that’s not the only intense story he hears within the walls of the jail. For example, another young man says he wanted to protect his cousin during a robbery: “When the police officer saw my cousin fleeing, he took his gun. I saw that he was going to shoot my cousin. I was very scared and I shot.” For that, the detainee was eventually sentenced to 17 years in prison.
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Ewout soon notices that the conversation is getting emotional, as the prisoner starts to cry. “It’s good that you have those feelings because I’ve talked to a lot of people who do terrible things but will never have those feelings.”
In the end, the presenter closes the program with some hope: “Despite the hardening of the culture on the island, there is also hope. The modern policy aimed at reintegration provides second chances. The time of confinement in containers is over. over, we look to tomorrow.”
Ewout: Life In Prison On Bonaire see you again next Monday at 8.30 pm on RTL 5 and can be seen again at Videoland.
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