Cherisse Moe

It is cru­cial for the Prison Ser­vice and pe­nal sys­tems to fo­cus on re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and re-in­te­gra­tion be­cause of the sub­stan­tial num­ber of crimes com­mit­ted by re­peat of­fend­ers. This was the ad­vice of Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Don­na Cox, as she de­liv­ered her ad­dress at yes­ter­day's grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny and Ex­hi­bi­tion Cy­cle Three of the Re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing In­mates Through Train­ing and Re­train­ing Pro­gramme. Dubbed The Im­pass­able Vic­to­ry, the cer­e­mo­ny was held at the Pris­ons Train­ing Col­lege, Ban­doo Av­enue, Tumpuna Road, Ari­ma. Some 107 in­mates, among them eight women, grad­u­at­ed from the pro­gramme.

The pro­gramme is host­ed by the Min­istry of Sci­ence Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. Cox said dur­ing their stay, the in­mates who were held at the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC), Gold­en Grove Men's Prison, Gold­en Grove Women's Prison and the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, ben­e­fit­ted from a num­ber of pro­grammes, all of which sought to cor­rect the re­peat of­fend­ers' be­hav­iour and of­fer them the chance to re-en­ter so­ci­ety and be­come con­struc­tive and re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zens. She said while there was no quick fix to ad­dress­ing the na­tion's es­ca­lat­ing crime sit­u­a­tion, there was need to adopt a mul­ti-faceted and in­ten­si­fied ap­proach to "stem the law­less­ness in the land."

Cox said Gov­ern­ment, which now adopts a restora­tive mod­el, rather than a ret­ribu­tive one, con­tin­ued to fo­cus on im­prov­ing and de­vel­op­ing the phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture of the Prison Ser­vice. She said the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty had a "com­pre­hen­sive plan" to up­grade the na­tion's pris­ons. That plan, she said in­clud­ed de­vel­op­men­tal works at the Car­rera and the Port-of-Spain Pris­ons, as well as build­ing a mod­ern prison fa­cil­i­ty in To­ba­go. "The Prison Ser­vice has al­so in­creased its fleet of ve­hi­cles by ac­quir­ing 14 new ve­hi­cles for this fis­cal year," she added. Al­so in at­ten­dance at the cer­e­mo­ny was Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er, John Rougi­er, who con­grat­u­lat­ed the in­mates.