Eight inmates celebrated getting their General Education Diplomas yesterday including Dennis DeSilva who got the highest score out of 89 candidates Island-wide.

The eight were at a ceremony at Westgate Correctional Facility attended by Environment Minister and veteran prison educator Neletha Butterfield, Prison Commissioner John Prescod and many proud family members.

Two other inmates have already been released after completing their GEDs.

DeSilva, who has done 16 months of a seven-year term for drug importation, said when he first was slammed up he had thoughts of suicide.

?I was depressed, I was 38-years-old and I was in prison. It was easy to give up.?

He credited a letter from his mother in helping him get through, urging him not to view prison as a place of punishment but to view it as a place to be productive.

He carried the letter around with him for six months despite suspicious prison officers wanting to take it away from him before they knew what it was.

Co-ordinator Sharon Wilkinson was thanked for urging him and others on.

?She believes in people who don?t believe in themselves. You don?t want to disappoint her but the reward falls on you.?

Now he is working his way through more books after waltzing through the GED in nine weeks and getting a job in the library.

?I was working in the kitchen but the combination of knives and heat was not a good mix.?

Upon release the former mason wants to sail the world and be writer.

Ms Butterfield said prison education programmes were more valued than in the days in the 1980s when she used to lug computers into the prison.

This point was emphasised by the Commissioner who said rehabilitation was a process for empowering inmates for the future.

At the ceremony Mrs. Dalton Tucker was given a plaque and a standing ovation for 50 years working as a prison educator.

A Royal Gazette photographer was barred from taking pictures at the ceremony.