Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds must ur­gent­ly in­ves­ti­gate what is hap­pen­ing be­hind the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison’s walls and re­port to the coun­try on what cor­rec­tive ac­tion is be­ing un­der­tak­en to en­sure those re­spon­si­ble for plot­ting a re­cent jail­break with pris­on­ers are brought to jus­tice.

A spe­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tion by Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­tiga­tive Desk head Mark Bas­sant re­vealed that long be­fore last week’s find of ex­plo­sives and weapons out­side the MSP, in­tel­li­gence on the plot was com­mu­ni­cat­ed as much as three months ago to sev­er­al se­nior law en­force­ment and Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials but no ac­tion was tak­en.

In fact, had an in­for­mant/s not giv­en vi­tal de­tails on last week’s arms stash, who knows what pos­si­ble sce­nario an at­tempt­ed jail­break could have led to. The crim­i­nal el­e­ment in T&T has been run­ning roughshod over cit­i­zens de­spite the pan­dem­ic and lock­downs and such a sce­nario must not be al­lowed to join our list of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty woes.

How many times have we al­so not heard about in­mates or­ches­trat­ing hits from be­hind prison walls?

Ca­lyp­son­ian King Austin once asked the ques­tion “Who will guard the guards?” Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the ques­tion re­mains to­day with our prison sys­tem.

Min­is­ter Hinds needs no hon­ey­moon in this new port­fo­lio hav­ing func­tioned in this ca­pac­i­ty be­fore. Hav­ing come full cir­cle and with pre­vi­ous knowl­edge of is­sues af­fect­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and the prison sys­tem in par­tic­u­lar, much more is ex­pect­ed of Min­is­ter Hinds.

In­deed, there are nu­mer­ous re­ports of the prison sys­tem’s short­com­ings com­piled by spe­cial­ly com­mis­sioned pan­els and from dis­cus­sions with the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion - all of which have pro­duced nu­mer­ous rec­om­men­da­tions for im­prove­ments to the sys­tem. Will we wait un­til an­oth­er plot is suc­cess­ful­ly hatched be­fore we fix the prob­lem?

This coun­try can­not af­ford to al­low hard­ened crim­i­nals fac­ing the courts for the most heinous of crimes a chance to es­cape and wreak fur­ther hav­oc on an al­ready dis­tressed pop­u­la­tion.

This news­pa­per hopes, there­fore, that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil head, will dic­tate that Min­is­ter Hinds gets on top of this sit­u­a­tion and de­liv­ers the names of not on­ly the pris­on­ers in­volved but the fa­cil­i­ta­tors with­in the law en­force­ment agen­cies who, ac­cord­ing to the in­ves­tiga­tive re­port, are “act­ing on be­half of a big man in­side.”

This is no small is­sue. The en­tire coun­try is look­ing with in­ter­est to see what comes out of this. No one can for­get the prison break of 2015, when Al­lan ‘Scan­ny’ Mar­tin, Christo­pher ‘Mon­ster’ Sel­by and Has­san Atwell forced their way out of the Port-of-Spain Prison, wound­ing a prison of­fi­cer and killing po­lice con­sta­ble Sher­man May­nard in their bid for free­dom. Mar­tin was shot and killed the same day, Atwell killed a week lat­er while hid­ing out in east Port-of-Spain and Sel­by even­tu­al­ly sur­ren­dered and is back be­hind prison walls. His­to­ry must not be al­lowed to re­peat it­self. Not when there is in­tel­li­gence that can pre­vent some­thing worse hap­pen­ing.