This is the fifth in a Sunday Observer series featuring stories told by inner-city men who have turned from a life of crime and are trying to steer young, at-risk males away from that destructive path.

AFTER painting the streets of Toronto, Canada blood-red, reformed gangster and deportee Jermaine Austin has managed to shed that tough, violent skin.

But Austin is not content with his new dispensation and has set out to convince other young males who may be enticed by the delusions of gangster grandeur, that crime does not pay and only causes woe for the perpetrators and their victims.

Austin was born in the poverty-stricken community of McGregor Gully in East Kingston but insists that poverty is no excuse for criminality.

“Poverty is not a cause for crime. Many times I go to my bed hungry and I just hold that because I respect myself. Because wi hungry wi going take up a gun and rob somebody who earn a honest bread? A man pick up a gun because him want to do it and then say is the system make him do it,” Austin told the Sunday Observer.

At the age of 15, Austin migrated to Canada and even before he got acclimatised to the cooler temperatures, fell prey to the gangster lifestyle.

“I couldn’t get along with my mother, and I got thrown out and was out living on the streets and got caught up in gang affairs. I was in and out of jail on a regular basis,” said Austin, who was locked up in East Detention, West Detention and Dawn jails in Canada.

He would gradually move higher up in the pecking order of crime from being a small-time street peddler and was involved in various forms of criminal activity.

But after a decade of giving the Royal Canadian Mounted Police a series of headaches, he was finally arrested during a major offensive against Jamaicans who fell on the wrong side of the law. He was charged and convicted of gun and drug possession and involvement in organised crime. Austin was sentenced to 10 years in Melhaven Prison.

While in prison his process of transformation began to take shape.

“Jail never do nothing for me, but prison is a different ball game, it is not any beat up thing. If you disrespect a man he will kill you,” he said.

During his incarceration he witnessed the murder of one of his close friends and that helped to jolt him back to the reality that a life of crime was one without substance and purpose.

His friend was stabbed repeatedly with a makeshift knife by other prisoners one night and his lifeless body was found by prison authorities the next morning.

“That kind of opened my eyes, so the best thing I could do was humble, and I humbled out the rest of my time,” Austin said.

After spending five years in the maximum security prison, Austin was released on immigration bail.

He took the opportunity to make up for the lost years he spent, emotionally and physically, away from his mother.

But his efforts to patch up the rocky relationship were shattered when he was ordered deported by Canadian officials.

Upon his arrival at the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston, he was in for a rude awakening. The year was 2007, when both major political parties were sharpening their teeth in preparation for general elections. A police officer who questioned him caused him to do serious introspection, he reflected.

“A policeman asked me where I was going to live and I told him McGregor Gully, and he said I would live no longer than three months because ‘dog eat dog’ there. I looked into myself deeply and vowed that I would prove him wrong. I think about that all the time,” he said.

Upon is arrival in the garrison community the stark reality of life in a Jamaican ghetto hit him squarely in the face like a ton of bricks.

“There was no unity among the youths in the community and I heard some things at night that I only saw on TV,” Austin said.

He could have easily taken up the life of a gunman but his prior experience of incarceration served as inspiration for him to straighten up and fly right.

Instead of trying to make a name for himself in the criminal underworld, Jermaine Austin went job hunting. It was while he was seeking employment that he met a member of the Citizen Justice and Security Programme (CSJP) who introduced him to the programme’s vocational skills training set-up.

Although he was initially refused entry into a welding class at the Young Men’s Christian Association, Austin was eventually allowed to sit in the classes due to his persistence.

As fate would have it, after successfully completing a level one course, he was introduced to senior community action officer at the CSJP, Denise Adams, who mentored him and pushed him to higher heights.

“She always bother wi, and we had to buckle up because we could not let her down. We decided as a class not to fail,” he said.

Austin has since completed a level two course in welding and is currently sitting level three.

He is a member of the nine-man Men With A Message team which has been giving motivational speeches in schools and depressed communities to encourage more young males to steer clear of the gangster lifestyle.

But he had to undergo intense vetting by the CSJP before he was cleared to be a part of Men With A Message. All the participants have to attend a course during which they are taught anger management, time management, deportment, presentation skills and etiquette.

Austin, who described himself as once being a fearless firebrand, said the anger management classes have done him a world of good.

“Before, things would come up in my face and I would lash out, but since I went to the retreat I don’t get mad anymore. I now know that as the Bible says, ‘a soft answer turns away wrath’,” he said.

He has also made up with his mother, with whom he says he communicates almost daily.

“I had a bitter feeling against her, but since I met the CSJP we speak quite often,” he said.

In his community of McGregor Gully he commands great respect among his peers, and as he puts it, no one would dare attempt to entice him into returning to a life of crime.

“They know I keep out of certain things and I tell them to park their guns when I am reasoning with them. Nobody never diss me like that. I show them respect and they show me respect,” he said.

Every week Austin joins the rest of the team and they travel all over the island to high schools and violence-prone communities to spread their message of hope.

This week, the team will travel to Holy Trinity High School in Kingston, where a teacher was brutally attacked by a male student. Their mission: try to steer a troubled youngster in the right direction.

McGregor Gully is located off Mountain View Avenue and young men from that area were previously involved in feuds with gangs from other communities who traditionally supported another political party. Once, it would be suicide to venture into the Jacques Road, 63 Mountain View Avenue and Third Avenue communities, but now Austin travels freely through these areas and speaks candidly to at-risk males there.

Adams is pleased with his progress and although mindful that change is an ongoing process, is almost sure that Austin will not backslide.

“Jermaine has made great strides. I sensed there were leadership qualities in him and I am happy with his progress. He took a progressive path and did not regress to antisocial activities as he saw the errors of his ways. I am quite pleased that Jermaine has made good use of his opportunity,” Adams told the Sunday Observer.

For Austin, his message to young men who are lured by gangsterism is simple — listen to your parents.

“They are just following. I would call them idiots, because any friend that encourage another friend to get in trouble, I would call the follower an idiot. They don’t listen to their parents and that was my problem. Learn to love, to read and learn more about your history,” he said.