It is both grat­i­fy­ing and dis­tress­ing that 16 pris­on­ers were tak­en to court on Tues­day to face charges, which in­clude the pos­ses­sion of 39 mo­bile phones, a quan­ti­ty of mar­i­jua­na and oth­er pro­hib­it­ed items.

The ar­rests of the 16 were the re­sult of an an­ti-crime op­er­a­tion en­ti­tled Op­er­a­tion In­ter­cept, com­pris­ing a joint team of po­lice and prison of­fi­cers who tar­get­ed high-risk pris­on­ers at the Port-of-Spain prison.

The fact that this joint team was able to find and seize the 39 phones is wel­come news, as it rep­re­sents a tem­po­rary re­prieve from what ap­pears to be a nev­er-end­ing flow of il­le­gal items in­to the na­tion's pris­ons.

But it is ex­treme­ly trou­bling that T&T's prison au­thor­i­ties have been un­able to stop il­le­gal items in gen­er­al, and mo­bile phones in par­tic­u­lar, from be­ing tak­en in­to the pris­ons.

A mo­bile phone in the hands of some pris­on­ers can be a dan­ger­ous weapon. That is be­cause while some pris­on­ers use these phones to call fam­i­ly mem­bers, there are oth­ers who use them to or­gan­ise their crim­i­nal net­works and call 'hits' on the out­side. These in­struc­tions to mur­der can be tar­get­ed to ri­val gang lead­ers or mem­bers, or prison of­fi­cers per­ceived to be stand­ing in the way of these in­car­cer­at­ed crim­i­nals.

There are gen­er­al­ly three ways in which pris­on­ers ac­quire mo­bile phones. The phones are smug­gled in­to the prison by fam­i­ly mem­bers; more re­cent­ly some il­le­gal items, in­clud­ing phones, have been dropped in­to prison yards by drone and there have been in­stances of prison of­fi­cers tak­ing phones to pris­on­ers.

A com­ment by Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP), In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Suzette Mar­tin, who was in charge of the op­er­a­tion, is al­so in­struc­tive.

“Our in­tel­li­gence in­di­cat­ed that il­le­gal and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties could be linked to cer­tain high-risk in­mates, and we used this in­tel­li­gence to re­strict these ac­tiv­i­ties, which will re­dound to greater safe­ty for law-abid­ing cit­i­zens,” Mar­tin said.

The ap­pear­ance in court of the 16 pris­on­ers must be a sig­nal to the law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties that there needs to be an on­go­ing crack­down on il­le­gal phones and con­tra­band in the prison sys­tem.

There has been talk for years now that T&T's pris­ons were due to get telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions scan­ners— that would al­low the prison au­thor­i­ties to in­ter­cept calls made from prison cells—as well as jam­mers, which block mo­bile calls from be­ing made. The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty needs to act with ur­gency in en­sur­ing the im­me­di­ate roll­out of these mon­i­tor­ing de­vices.

The prison au­thor­i­ties al­so need to crack down on vis­i­tors and rogue of­fi­cers who smug­gle phones and con­tra­band in­to pris­ons. This can be done by in­creas­ing the in­ten­si­ty and the num­ber of search­es on those who come in­to con­tact with the high-risk pris­on­ers. Cor­rupt prison of­fi­cers must al­so be root­ed out of the ser­vice and made to feel the full force of the law.

Third­ly, the 16 pris­on­ers, who ap­peared in court to face charges of il­le­gal pos­ses­sion of the con­tra­band items, must be de­nied priv­i­leges, com­men­su­rate with their crimes and the risk they pose to law-abid­ing cit­i­zens

The au­thor­i­ties, as well, should en­sure a plan to in­tro­duce a bank of tele­phones for use by pris­on­ers who are co­op­er­a­tive and not in­clined to breach rules and reg­u­la­tions ma­te­ri­alis­es.

While the crack­down on il­le­gal tele­phones and con­tra­band would be the stick for the high-risk, hard-core pris­on­ers, the avail­abil­i­ty of the phone bank for oth­er pris­on­ers would be the car­rot.