On Mon­day 8 June 2020, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice will re­ceive ten san­i­ta­tion tun­nels to sup­port the sani­ti­sa­tion of per­sons com­ing in­to and out of the pris­ons.

This do­na­tion will be in ad­di­tion to an­oth­er one pro­vid­ed on Mon­day this week, which in­clud­ed in­frared ther­mome­ters and clean­ing prod­ucts such as dis­in­fec­tant, liq­uid soap, bleach, hand san­i­tiz­ers and oth­er nec­es­sary sup­plies, in ac­cor­dance with guide­lines is­sued by the WHO for the pre­ven­tion and con­trol of the pan­dem­ic in pris­ons.

Ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease from CARI­COM IM­PACS—the CARI­COM Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty—the do­na­tion of ba­sic san­i­ta­tion sup­plies and oth­er re­lat­ed COVID-19 sup­plies was done with the sup­port of the British High Com­mis­sion in Port of Spain, for Prison Ser­vices in both Trinidad and To­ba­go and Grena­da.

CARI­COM IM­PACS says this is to help min­imise the risk of in­fec­tion and trans­mis­sion of COVID-19 in pris­ons in both coun­tries, giv­en the eas­ing of COVID-19 re­lat­ed re­stric­tions.

Over the past two weeks, CARI­COM IM­PACS and the British High Com­mis­sion in Port of Spain have suc­cess­ful­ly do­nat­ed sup­plies to the pris­ons and cor­rec­tion­al ser­vices in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines and Suri­name.

CARI­COM IM­PACTS re­ports that dur­ing this week, ap­prox­i­mate­ly four oth­er CARI­COM Mem­bers will re­ceive sim­i­lar as­sis­tance, all as part of the CARI­COM co­or­di­nat­ed re­sponse to COVID-19, to pre­vent and mit­i­gate the spread of the pan­dem­ic in pris­ons, law en­force­ment and oth­er se­cu­ri­ty sec­tors in CARI­COM Mem­ber States.

The re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty body notes that in Trinidad and To­ba­go and Grena­da, there have been no con­firmed COVID-19 cas­es in pris­ons. How­ev­er, with an out­break of COVID-19, the lives of prison ad­min­is­tra­tors, in­mates, and the gen­er­al pub­lic will be at risk: po­ten­tial­ly plac­ing tremen­dous strain on the pub­lic health sys­tem. It is a sce­nario which the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) has warned coun­tries to pre­pare against, as pris­ons are gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be am­pli­fiers in the spread of in­fec­tious dis­eases and pose a great chal­lenge for au­thor­i­ties work­ing to pre­vent and con­tain COVID-19.

The re­lease adds that the Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sys­tem (RSS) is a key part­ner in this col­lab­o­ra­tive ini­tia­tive by pro­vid­ing air­lift and lo­gis­ti­cal sup­port for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of sup­plies to some CARI­COM Mem­ber States. Al­so, the French Forces in the Caribbean are pro­vid­ing air­lift of sup­plies to The Ba­hamas, Be­lize and Haiti.

Back in May this year, CARI­COM IM­PACS col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) to pro­vide a vir­tu­al train­ing ses­sion to more than 500 front­line of­fi­cers on mea­sures to pro­tect them­selves in the line of du­ty. This ef­fort strength­ened the ca­pac­i­ty of prison staff to bet­ter man­age their op­er­a­tions in the con­text of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, and al­so com­ple­ments the on­go­ing ef­forts by CARI­COM IM­PACS, the British High Com­mis­sion and the RSS to pro­vide ba­sic san­i­ta­tion sup­port to CARI­COM Mem­ber States.

Ear­li­er this year, on 25 March 2020, at the CARI­COM IM­PACS Meet­ing of Heads of Cor­rec­tions and Prison Ser­vices, pro­pos­als were ad­vanced to re­duce COVID-19 in Pris­ons in­clud­ed:

-  The ear­ly re­lease of non-vi­o­lent and sick and el­der­ly in­mates who pose ab­solute­ly no threat to so­ci­ety but on­ly serve to in­crease the con­cen­tra­tion of per­sons in pris­ons;

-  In­creased screen­ing of staff and pris­on­ers;

-  Lim­it­ing un­nec­es­sary in-per­son vis­i­ta­tion so as to re­duce the risk of COVID-19 ex­po­sure in fa­cil­i­ties;

-  En­hanced in­for­ma­tion shar­ing among pris­on­ers; and

-  The de­vel­op­ment of na­tion­al prison pan­dem­ic plans.