Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The To­ba­go Prison is slow­ly slip­ping in­to the sea be­cause of coastal ero­sion.

The build­ing, lo­cat­ed be­hind the Scar­bor­ough Po­lice Sta­tion, was orig­i­nal­ly loaned to the Prison Ser­vice by the To­ba­go Po­lice Di­vi­sion.

A prison source told Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed that there is a lack of po­lit­i­cal will for a new fa­cil­i­ty, de­scrib­ing the build­ing as “some­one squat­ting, on the side of a moun­tain”.

Head of the Prison Of­fi­cers' As­so­ci­a­tion Ger­ard Gor­don said they have not re­ceived any in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing a re­place­ment fa­cil­i­ty.

"It will ap­pear that they are wait­ing for the prison to slip in­to the sea to then do some­thing,” he said in a phone in­ter­view last week.

The back of the build­ing is be­ing im­pact­ed.

"I would like to be­lieve our cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter, be­ing To­bag­on­ian, does some­thing. But I don't know if any re­al con­sid­er­a­tion is giv­en to the pur­pose of hav­ing a mod­ern cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ty built in To­ba­go be­cause we have learnt a long time ago that treat­ing with crim­i­nals and crim­i­nal­i­ty, just lock­ing them up for the pe­ri­od of in­car­cer­a­tion is not enough and it on­ly lends to the con­tin­ued dele­te­ri­ous ef­fects of crime in T&T.”

While he ac­knowl­edged that some at­tempts had been made in the past, he doubts that cur­rent Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine will get the nec­es­sary sup­port from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to es­tab­lish a new fa­cil­i­ty.

"The im­por­tance of that fa­cil­i­ty in To­ba­go is one sim­ply about eq­ui­ty and treat­ment. The dif­fi­cul­ties faced by the fam­i­lies of the in­car­cer­at­ed in­di­vid­ual can­not be un­der­stat­ed and es­pe­cial­ly with­in re­cent times with the is­sues with the sea bridge and the air bridge they don't have the same ac­cess as their coun­ter­parts in Trinidad. I think more than any­thing else, it is some­thing that could be looked at and ad­dressed se­ri­ous­ly.”

There is a hold­ing bay cell to trans­port pris­on­ers be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go on board the Buc­coo Reef fer­ry.

He fur­ther com­plained that the se­ri­ous space con­straints at the To­ba­go Prison in­ter­fere with the ex­pan­sion of de­vel­op­men­tal pro­grammes for of­fend­ers.

"With the pass­ing of time, the is­sues cer­tain­ly are not get­ting bet­ter and it is fes­ter­ing like a wound that you leave un­treat­ed ... The staff is do­ing as best as they can with what is made avail­able to them, but To­ba­go rep­re­sents the poster child in my view, of­ten ne­glect­ed by the state to­wards the Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice.”

In the past, there were plans to ac­quire land for a new prison in To­ba­go how­ev­er, those plans were ul­ti­mate­ly aban­doned, with no al­ter­na­tive so­lu­tions be­ing put forth.

In 2020, for­mer act­ing com­mis­sion­er of pris­ons Den­nis Pul­chan an­nounced a new cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ty at Montes­sori Dri­ve, Glen Road, Scar­bor­ough, for “low-lev­el crimes” in­mates. With­in days, res­i­dents protest­ed the idea and the plan was shut down soon af­ter.

To­day, Gor­don be­lieves there may be no end to the To­ba­go Prison or­deal.

“There is no light at the end of the tun­nel for this sit­u­a­tion in To­ba­go. The State has proven time and time again that the prison in To­ba­go is not a pri­or­i­ty. They don't look at us–and it seems the on­ly time it gets at­ten­tion is when you are able to threat­en their po­si­tion in pol­i­tics, and the politi­cians of the day see no mileage be­ing gained from ad­dress­ing this long-stand­ing is­sue in To­ba­go.”

He said the lack of suit­able fa­cil­i­ties for prison of­fi­cers was an­oth­er trou­bling as­pect, not on­ly in To­ba­go but at all prison fa­cil­i­ties.

Gor­don vowed to vis­it all prison fa­cil­i­ties in T&T and make of­fi­cial re­ports to OSH.

Guardian Me­dia was told there are three 10×12 cells that house 40 in­mates at the ex­ist­ing prison.

Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er: Giv­en what we have, we are do­ing an ex­cel­lent job

Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons De­op­er­sad Ra­moutar ac­knowl­edged that while coastal ero­sion has af­fect­ed the op­er­a­tions of the To­ba­go Prison, he has found cre­ative ways to use the re­sources at his dis­pos­al to en­sure the pris­on­ers and of­fi­cers are com­fort­able.

Ra­moutar told Guardian Me­dia in a phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, "Yes, there is ero­sion but it's not that the prison will col­lapse. Yes, I agree we should re­lo­cate be­cause it's not in the best con­di­tion. But giv­en what we have, we are do­ing an ex­cel­lent job.

“To­ba­go's prison is in the best state of in­fra­struc­ture that it ever was. That has been done by as­sis­tance from the THA and the prison of­fi­cers who work in To­ba­go. Over a few months ago we had the prison evac­u­at­ed and re­fur­bished by of­fi­cers who are pas­sion­ate about what they do."

In 2022, the pris­on­ers were tem­porar­i­ly re­lo­cat­ed to Trinidad for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion works at the fa­cil­i­ty in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the THA.

Now the build­ing is in a bet­ter con­di­tion, he said.

He said the in­mates at the re­fur­bished fa­cil­i­ty have had few­er com­plaints and are more com­fort­able

He said there was a new pro­gramme for in­mates in To­ba­go as part of the ser­vice's restora­tive jus­tice ini­tia­tives.

“Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion does not on­ly hap­pen in a class­room. Yes, they need class­rooms, but it's an on-the-job prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence.

“I have of­fi­cers be­ing spe­cial­ly trained so they can mo­ti­vate in­mates. We have a bet­ter qual­i­ty fam­i­ly vis­it where we en­cour­age the fam­i­lies to mo­ti­vate them to do bet­ter, that's the strongest mo­ti­va­tion.”

Ra­moutar added, “The prison as­so­ci­a­tion could do well if they could get their of­fi­cers to unite and see that they can make a much big­ger dif­fer­ence than if you have an an­tag­o­nist ap­proach.”

At­tempts to reach Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds to ad­dress the mat­ter were un­suc­cess­ful.