Three years of their lives have been spent locked away, but they each managed, in his own way, to turn incarceration into something positive.

In 1996, Samsundar Sammy Mahadeo and a friend held up a bar owner with a cutlass and a "dummy" gun and robbed him of $400. Mahadeo's friend was held on the scene, so he took all the money and went on a liming spree.

Gregory Adams, at 15, had been part of a botched robbery attempt with some older "friends". His part was to hide the homemade shotgun the others had used in the robbery. In the process of hiding the gun, he was caught and charged with possession of arms and ammunition. To this day Adams doesn't know how much money was stolen.

After various bouts of truancy, violence, marijuana peddling, and expulsion from two schools - Holy Cross College in Arima and St Joseph's College - Christopher Kerry's parents admitted they couldn't control their son and placed him before the court.

The three boys were sentenced to three-year terms at YTC.

Once inside, their rebellion and anger quickly dissipated. They learned they could not beat the system.

YTC is an alternative to 'big jail'. The emphasis is more on education than punishment; the boys can sit CXC O-Levels, learn a trade, play professional sports, and go home on weekends if they behave well.

But there have also been complaints of brutality and corruption within YTC: of some prison officers smuggling in marijuana and cigarettes for the boys; and beating them into submission. According to one officer, instances of beatings are rare and happen only when the boys are disobedient. Some prison officers make a difference. Kerry, Adams and Mahadeo likened one prison officer to a father figure - who helped them with their studies and talked to them.

YTC was a turning point for these three: Kerry, the blue-eyed "Trinidad white", Adams, of African descent, and Mahadeo, an Indian.

Kerry's best friend in Holy Cross College, with whom he had once planned to plant marijuana in the hills for a living, is now in Remand Yard, awaiting trial for murder.

Kerry, though, sat three CXC subjects. He got an "A" in Biology, and two "twos" - in Mathematics and English Language, and is studying O-Level Physics.

Adams sat the same three subjects and received a "B", a "three", and a "two", respectively. He is now sitting chemistry, physics and Spanish. Next year, Kerry and Adams plan to enroll at the John Donaldson Technical Institute.

Mahadeo captains the football and cricket teams and plays hockey. He intends to get a job and play professional football with a south-based club.

Realizing the value of freedom the trio are anticipating their release. They want to spend time with their families and to work hard at being a success.

"I never used to like nobody to talk to me. I wouldn't say I liked to fight, but nobody would lash mih and get away with it.

"Growing up, I was real happy, but I was a real disrespectful little fella. Mih parents never used to beat me or anything like that, so I would do something and I would see that I get away once, so I will believe I could always do that," he explains.

His parents own a successful quarrying and construction business in Arima. Kerry never wanted for anything, but admits he took it for granted.

After his expulsion from the two schools, Kerry's father tried to get him enrolled in another senior secondary school. He wanted to plant weed.

"When people smoking weed, they does have an idea that they smoking weed because it give you 'the wisdom, the knowledge and the understanding'.

"Well, what I realize now is that all it does really do is kill your brain cells, but some of my brain cells they still intact," he says, jokingly. He used to smoke 'really, really hard', but managed to kick the habit while at the YTC. He would see other boys pick up from the floor the discarded butts that prison officers had mashed with their boots, and smoke them.

Cigarettes can buy anything in YTC.

"I used to tell my parents don't bring anything for me because everything I want I buying with cigarettes; clothes, slippers, it had shoes I coulda buy."

Kerry is due to leave YTC in about three months. He wants to build things, he says, and hopes to study civil engineering at John Donaldson; maybe secure a scholarship either to the UWI or to an American university through the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT).

The stigma of being a "YTC graduate" does not faze him.

"I don't let nothing hinder me, you know. I let people know beforehand where I came from, so they don't have to find out any other way and there won't be any kind of conflict afterward."

Mahadeo's release date is September 9^th.

All three boys are part of the prison outreach programme where they go to various schools and lecture to discourage errant youths from pursuing a life of crime.

Mahadeo takes his role a step further.

After he got the opportunity to talk to youths on the television programme Talking it Out, he and two of his friends, Fareed Ali and Fabien Alexis got the idea to host a similar programme after they are freed.

He is pretty sure about his personal plans: renovate one of his parents' two houses, get married to a "dougla girl" at 26, and have two children.

Family life is now extremely important to him. Each time he sees his parents he tells them he loves them.

"I want to go out there and show a father's love and show my children how a father really supposed to be.

"I not no saint but right now I trying to work on my spiritual side. I does get up and read my scriptures, my Bible, and try to understand it. I don't believe in religion, but I want to do the things of the Bible, and I does real fall short still, you know."

ADAMS'S STORY:

Gregory Adams only has three more months at YTC. He began learning food preparation and became the assistant chef.

"Since I start the studies, I make a timetable. Most of mih time I does have to go out and talk to youth groups. But I really devote my time to studying now because I want to do my three exams in November and go John D next year.

"Inside here give you the time to see about the mistake and what you really want and how you going to achieve it."

He comes from a single-parent family, as do the majority of boys. His mother has supported him through his troubles.

His father came to see him once. Adams holds no grudge but he still plans to ask his father why he never visited. As a child, he says, his father visited him at least once a week.

He doesn't blame the youths with whom he got arrested either because, he says, everybody makes their own choices. When he goes home on those rare weekends, those same 'friends' tease him about his changed life and 'nice boy' image. He does not mind. Three years locked away was enough to learn his lesson.

"The worst criticism against me was that I was in here, but I would not let that stop me," Adams says. "It must have somebody who will believe in you and give you that one chance, and that is all I need."

Most of the boys at the Youth Training Centre (YTC) come from single-parent families, says the prison superintendent Verne Sylvester.

A lot of them came off the streets or were thrown out of their homes by their families - some of them have never even seen their fathers, he adds.

"A lot of people talk about the environment outside but I grew up in Laventille and I didn't come out a criminal. My children grew up there and my son went to UWI and my daughter works at Clico.

"It's the environment inside the home that breeds what comes out of it," he says.

Sylvester is in his early forties and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the UWI and a diploma in public administration.

"One of the things I want to see is the time that these boys spend here struck off their police certificates.

"This institution is not classified as a prison but yet if the boys go for a certificate of good character this shows up and I don't think that should be," he says.

Maybe it's his youth or his own experience as a father that makes him se the boys at YTC as genuinely good children who made bad choices. He says people should not be made to pay for a mistake for the rest of their life.

"I don't think the public is well educated enough to accept these boys wen they leave here and many just fall back into the same environment they came from.

"The support mechanisms, the after care just don't exist for them," he explains.

For the first time in YTC's history, a boy was accepted as a trainee at a government institution.

Marlon Hunt, who was held for marijuana possession, now goes to work every day at the Water and Sewerage Authority head office in St Joseph. He is dropped to work every day by prison officials and collected every evening. When his time is up at YTC, his job will most likely become full-time.

Three other boys are also dropped off to work each day - one at a barber shop, while the other two work as welders.

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