Michelle Loubon

Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er John Rougi­er says 18 Cari­com coun­tries are ex­pect­ed to ben­e­fit from the sign­ing of the Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) be­tween the Arthur Lok Jack School of Busi­ness, Mt Hope, and the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Heads of Cor­rec­tion­al and Prison Ser­vices (ACH­PS). The MOU was al­so signed by the school's ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor and Pro­fes­sor of Strat­e­gy Dr Miguel Car­ril­lo. The agree­ment will al­low the ACH­PS to ac­cess ser­vices pro­vid­ed by the school, in­clud­ing re­search, ed­u­ca­tion, train­ing, in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing, qual­i­ty as­sur­ance, ex­pert con­sult­ing and the col­lec­tion and analy­sis of da­ta.

The sign­ing took place at the school's Mt Hope com­pound yes­ter­day.

The ACHCPS theme was "From Ret­ri­bu­tion to Cor­rec­tions: Un­lock­ing the Ex­cel­lence." Rougi­er said: "18 Cari­com ter­ri­to­ries are ex­pect­ed to ben­e­fit. T&T, Ja­maica and Guyana are the on­ly three Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries with more than one fa­cil­i­ty. "St Vin­cent, Grena­da, St Lu­cia and Haiti have one fa­cil­i­ty. We al­so rep­re­sent Ba­hamas, Turks and Caicos, British In­de­pen­dent ter­ri­to­ries, and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic." Rougi­er, who is al­so pres­i­dent of ACHCPS, said there was al­so the need to cre­ate a sense of Caribbean se­cu­ri­ty. "We need to re­search and de­vel­op a Caribbean se­cu­ri­ty. We need peo­ple who un­der­stand the whole is­sue of se­cu­ri­ty with­in the re­gion. We have to look at the treat­ment and the lack of train­ing is­sues. There are chal­lenges," he added.

He said among the oth­er is­sues which need­ed to be ad­dressed by the ACHCPS were growth and lead­er­ship. He added: "No longer is the prison seen as brawn. There is brain. The man­date is to take a dif­fer­ent ap­proach. "There is the in­tro­duc­tion of restora­tive jus­tice. The fo­cus is on prison re­form and de­vel­op­ment. More and more we are at­tract­ing peo­ple with aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions. "They are com­ing in with de­grees. There are a num­ber of heads who are qual­i­fied," added Rougi­er, who holds a de­gree in so­ci­ol­o­gy. Rougi­er said Gor­don Hus­bands, an as­sis­tant to the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, is re­spon­si­ble for train­ing, re­search and de­vel­op­ment for the re­gion. He em­pha­sised the need for so­cial ser­vices, cor­rec­tions, me­di­a­tion and train­ing and man­age­ment pro­grammes.

Rougi­er said over­crowd­ing was one of the ma­jor prob­lems plagu­ing the re­gion. He said: "Nine­ty per cent of pris­on­ers go back in­to the wider so­ci­ety. We are to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for what they do. They have to be told tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is the be­gin­ning of change." T&T has about 3,500 pris­on­ers. Rougi­er iden­ti­fied re­search as a key area for at­ten­tion in the fight against re­cidi­vism. He said: "Re­search would bet­ter un­der­stand and in­form pol­i­cy and strate­gic de­vel­op­ment. "There is the need for ex­pan­sion of pro­grammes, not just in pris­ons but to the com­mu­ni­ties. On­ly the per­pe­tra­tors who can­not be con­trolled are more now in prison con­tribut­ing to the over­crowd­ing. "Re­search will as­sist in tak­ing it for­ward. It will as­sist in tak­ing it to the re­gion." Rougi­er laud­ed Car­ril­lio for his as­sis­tance in adopt­ing bet­ter prac­tices.

Car­ril­lio: Turn pris­on­ers in­to as­sets

Car­ril­lio said the pro­gramme was geared to­ward "turn­ing a pris­on­er from a li­a­bil­i­ty in­to an as­set." He added: "We need Caribbean peo­ple who can add val­ue to the so­ci­ety since the so­ci­eties do not have a large vol­ume of peo­ple to fu­el the work­force. "We don't have the lux­u­ry of a large vol­ume of peo­ple. We have to grow the pop­u­la­tion. Re­tain the tal­ent. We have to do what­ev­er we can to trans­form them in­to law-abid­ing peo­ple," he said.