Derek Achong

The Pris­ons Of­fi­cers' As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) is com­mend­ing the Gov­ern­ment for mov­ing for­ward with plans to im­ple­ment sev­er­al new se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures at T&T's pris­ons.

POA pres­i­dent Ceron Richards said so yes­ter­day short­ly af­ter Jus­tice Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har an­nounced Gov­ern­ment had agreed to pump over $12 mil­lion to­wards the in­stal­la­tion of a 24-hour CCTV cam­era sys­tem at all the na­tion's pris­ons and had re­ceived the first batch of hand­held scan­ners and cell­phone jam­mers on Tues­day.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair, Ra­mad­har said: "To­day the Cab­i­net ap­proved fur­ther fund­ing to the tune of $12 mil­lion-plus to en­sure that we have video sur­veil­lance through­out al­most every part of the pris­ons.

"This is not on­ly to en­sure the se­cu­ri­ty of the prison of­fi­cers but cer­tain­ly of the in­mates.

"Yes­ter­day we had de­liv­ery of the first batch of hand­held scan­ners and grab­bers for deal­ing with the prob­lems of the il­le­gal use of cell­phones with­in the pris­ons and with­in the next sev­er­al weeks we shall see the de­liv­ery of many more."

On the is­sue of sur­veil­lance cam­eras, Ra­mad­har said they had ini­tial­ly planned to im­ple­ment the mea­sure on a small­er scale but had to ad­just it, bring­ing in the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC) to play a key role as well in light of re­cent is­sues with­in the na­tion's pris­ons.

"We had al­ready ap­proved a small­er num­ber of cam­eras in the past but we have ex­pand­ed it now and it will be a com­plete sys­tem that mon­i­tors all the cam­eras in one cen­tralised lo­ca­tion and it will al­so fa­cil­i­tate con­nec­tion with the NOC so that they too will have vi­sion with­in the pris­ons. From what the ex­perts have told us it will be able to cov­er all the pris­ons," he added.

Ra­mad­har's state­ment came a day af­ter prison of­fi­cer Ker­wyn Boswell was shot out­side his San Fer­nan­do home, an in­ci­dent which had once again prompt­ed the POA to raise its voice over Gov­ern­ment's tar­di­ness to im­ple­ment long-promised ex­tra se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures for prison of­fi­cers and with­in the prison sys­tem.

Deal­ing with the is­sue of guns for prison of­fi­cers, Ra­mad­har said Gov­ern­ment al­ready had pur­chased bul­let­proof vests and guns for of­fi­cers.

He said when he came in­to of­fice he met with act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams on the is­suance of guns to prison of­fi­cers whose lives may be in jeop­ardy but ad­mit­ted it was not his call.

"It's a very rigid thing for them (prison of­fi­cers) to be armed, yes, but in cir­cum­stances where we ap­pre­ci­ate their lives may be in dan­ger and we have seen now some ev­i­dence of vi­o­lence on them, that will al­ways give the ben­e­fit of the doubt to the grant of the firearms to prison of­fi­cers.

Over­crowd­ing big­ger is­sue

Speak­ing in a tele­phone in­ter­view short­ly af­ter the an­nounce­ment, how­ev­er, POA pres­i­dent Ceron Richards said while the as­so­ci­a­tion was pleased with the move it was still con­cerned with the rate of im­ple­men­ta­tion of that and sev­er­al oth­er se­cu­ri­ty ini­tia­tives.

"We are wait­ing and wait­ing and the sit­u­a­tion is get­ting pro­gres­sive­ly more dan­ger­ous for both the pris­on­ers and our mem­bers," he added.

While Richards said the hand­held scan­ners and cell­phone jam­mers would as­sist with se­cu­ri­ty in the pris­ons, he said over­crowd­ing at the Re­mand fa­cil­i­ty was still a ma­jor con­cern which need­ed to be ad­dressed ur­gent­ly.

"Over­crowd­ing is ex­ag­ger­at­ing all the se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns. What we need is a gal­lant ef­fort by Gov­ern­ment to treat with the Re­mand Prison and cre­ate a fa­cil­i­ty which is less prone to con­fronta­tion and vi­o­lence," he added.

Asked whether a re­cent move by pris­ons au­thor­i­ties to re­lo­cate 500 pris­on­ers from the Re­mand Yard fa­cil­i­ty at the Gold­en Grove Prison, Arou­ca, fol­low­ing a se­ries of clash­es be­tween prison of­fi­cers and in­mates had im­proved the sit­u­a­tion, Richards sug­gest­ed an ad­di­tion­al 400 pris­on­ers need­ed to be moved to make a tan­gi­ble dif­fer­ence.

Re­fer­ring to the shoot­ing of 42-year-old Boswell on Tues­day, Richards said his as­so­ci­a­tion would con­tin­ue to press for more of its mem­bers to be is­sued with pri­vate firearm li­cences when they were off du­ty.

"We will not let up be­cause we fear if we do the au­thor­i­ties will al­so," Richards added.