On the heels of Thurs­day’s es­cape at the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC) in Arou­ca where five res­i­dents on cap­i­tal charges es­caped, Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Ger­ald Wil­son sent a stern re­minder to prison of­fi­cers to let “Vig­i­lance” be their watch­word.

Wil­son said he would pre­fer that of­fi­cers pay more at­ten­tion, “to their sur­round­ings and the body lan­guage of in­mates.”

Asked why es­capes seems to be “easy” at the na­tion’s pris­ons, al­so at oth­er in­sti­tu­tions such as the YTC and the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre de­spite the fact that it’s un­der the pre­view of the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, Wil­son said he would not say that es­capes are easy but would rather say that op­por­tu­ni­ties are more fre­quent and so­cial me­dia al­lows the in­for­ma­tion to be com­mu­ni­cat­ed faster.

“The hype with prison con­di­tions and the length of time in­mates re­main in the re­mand might be giv­ing these in­mates free card to leave the sys­tem with­out the re­quired court doc­u­ments,” Wil­son said.

In a past in­ter­view, pres­i­dent of the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) Ceron Richards said that the ex­pec­ta­tion of more prison breaks in T&T in the fu­ture is like a tick­ing time bomb if the Ju­di­cial Sys­tem is not re­viewed and fixed soon.

He made this state­ment sub­se­quent to the May 15 prison break at the Gold­en Grove Re­mand Yard Prison in Arou­ca where eight pris­on­ers es­caped.

Richards said be­fore the many ques­tions “There needs to be ex­am­in­ing the sce­nario.”

“The Ju­di­cia­ry has to do bet­ter in T&T be­cause that is the ba­sis for all the frus­tra­tion in the pris­ons. The in­mates at that re­mand fa­cil­i­ty are very frus­trat­ed with the slow pace. The in­jus­tice has cre­at­ed an al­most un­ten­able en­vi­ron­ment and prison of­fi­cers can­not man­age the lev­el of dis­en­chant­ment to­wards the sys­tem,” Richards said.

Richards said that he strong­ly be­lieves that if the ju­di­cial sys­tem is not fixed, in­mates will have the in­ter­nal dri­ve to ex­e­cute what they deem as their own jus­tice.

On Thurs­day, five young of­fend­ers from the YTC es­caped. It was be­lieved to be well planned and or­ches­trat­ed as in­tel­li­gence re­ceived sug­gest­ed that there may have been a get­away car in­volved.

A hack­saw blade was al­so used to cut through the bars of the dor­mi­to­ry in which they were in.

The es­capees have been iden­ti­fied as: Dil­lano Mar­cano, 16, of Pearl Dri­ve, La Paille Vil­lage, Ca­roni and LP 34 Agos­ti­ni Street, St Joseph; Jaden Fletch­er of LP#73 Par­ry­lands Vil­lage, Guapo, Sixth Com­pa­ny Cir­cu­lar Road, New Grant, Princes Town; An­tho­ny Ram­sumair, 19, of No 12 New Vil­lage Ex­ten­sion, La For­tune, Wood­land; Bri­an Seep­er­sad, 17, of No 24 Sea Trace, Bagatelle Road, Diego Mar­tin and Dar­ren Scott, 17, of O’Meara Road, Cara­po Vil­lage, Ari­ma.

Up to late Fri­day search­es con­tin­ued for the five young of­fend­ers.