Otto Carrington
On the heels of Sunday’s prison break in which five inmates escaped from the Golden Grove Prison in Arouca, immediate changes will be made to the prison infrastructure to ensure that there is not a repeat.
This was confirmed by Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds on Tuesday, following his tour of the facility.
Hinds toured the dormitory area, where the five escapees were housed, along with acting Commissioner of Prisons Deopersad Ramoutar.
Speaking to the media afterwards, Hinds said he will be approaching senior officials in Government with recommendations made by Ramoutar on how best to move forward.
“I received a preliminary report which reflected the events that transpired, and I just had an opportunity to tour the facility and to see the exact location that was used in this escape and to have discussions with the engineers of the Prisons Service and the engineers of the Engineering Corps of the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force and the administration of the Prisons Service. So now, I have to contemplate things that must be done to ensure that we don’t have a recurrence of this kind of situation,” Hinds said.
“It is very very troubling indeed, so we toured the facility, we looked at the locust of the escape, we immediately put heads together and the experts, the professionals, engineers as I say, have worked out some immediate solutions to those particular problems to harden the fort, harden the target, moreso as to prevent more recurrences so,” he added.
Hinds disclosed that he was given recommendations for an infrastructure to be installed at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex in Mt Hope to only treat with prisoners. This, he said, also followed an incident where a prisoner who was hospitalised escaped but was recaptured that same evening.
Hinds said from his intelligence, the five inmates were low-risk prisoners who did not have a history of bad behaviour and as such, they were not expecting that sort of action from the men, who would have done fairly short sentences at the Carrera Island Prison.
“They were brought here four days before the escape in order to benefit from training in auto body straightening and repairs to prepare them for a productive re-entry into society and they made an opportunity to make good their escape. That by itself left me sad and concerned, but the resulting actions, I must say, have left me very proud as the inter-agency approach, from the Police Service to the Defence Force, to the Prison Service, have been very commendable and resulted in the detention of four of the five escapees within 24 hours.
“That is something to be recognised and praised, and my intelligence is that the last individual will be arrested soon,” the Minister said.
Ramoutar told the media he had no intentions of closing the rehabilitation programme.
“Those individuals saw an opportunity and took it, sadly. And an investigation is on its way and if anyone is held culpable, yes they will be dealt with.
“And while we have increased our vigilance, in no way and no time will we stop our rehabilitation programmes for the inmates. There is no correlation there.
“Rehabilitation is a must, it is part of our mandate and we will continue to do those things while we keep check on our security,” Ramoutar said.
He said they will work on modifying security systems in the prisons.
