Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­les@guardian.co.tt

The de­com­mis­sion­ing of the Port-of-Spain Prison is now un­der­way, with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 in­mates al­ready trans­ferred to fa­cil­i­ties at Gold­en Grove, Arou­ca, as au­thor­i­ties be­gin a phased shut­down aimed at clos­ing the his­toric prison by De­cem­ber.

A prison source told Guardian Me­dia that the trans­fers took place over the past week, mark­ing the first stage of a process that will ul­ti­mate­ly re­lo­cate the fa­cil­i­ty’s en­tire in­mate pop­u­la­tion.

Be­fore the ex­er­cise be­gan, the Fred­er­ick Street prison housed just over 500 in­mates, in­clud­ing more than 300 re­mand pris­on­ers. The pop­u­la­tion com­pris­es re­mand in­mates await­ing tri­al, con­vict­ed pris­on­ers serv­ing sen­tences, and con­demned in­mates on death row.

The source did not pro­vide a break­down of how many in­mates from each cat­e­go­ry were in­clud­ed in the first trans­fer.

Con­tact­ed on the mat­ter, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Elvin Scant­er­bury con­firmed that the clo­sure process has com­menced and in­mates were al­ready be­ing moved.

“We have start­ed pur­su­ing the clo­sure. Sev­er­al things are hap­pen­ing si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, but we have be­gun with mov­ing in­mates,” Scant­er­bury told Guardian Me­dia.

He said the re­lo­ca­tion would be car­ried out in stages.

“We’ll pro­ceed in­cre­men­tal­ly un­til all in­mates, equip­ment and oth­er as­sets have been re­moved,” he said.

Scant­er­bury added that the Prison Ser­vice re­mains on track to com­plete the ex­er­cise by year-end.

Asked about the fu­ture of the Port-of-Spain site, he said dis­cus­sions would have to take place with the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty be­fore any de­ci­sion is made.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der first an­nounced plans to de­com­mis­sion the prison on Sep­tem­ber 4, 2025, say­ing the ex­er­cise would be con­duct­ed in four phas­es, with in­mates be­ing trans­ferred to fa­cil­i­ties at Gold­en Grove.

Ac­cord­ing to the prison source, the first group of in­mates has been re­lo­cat­ed to the Re­mand Prison in Arou­ca.

The clo­sure fol­lows years of con­cerns about the prison’s age, con­di­tion and lo­ca­tion in the heart of the cap­i­tal.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue, for­mer pris­ons com­mis­sion­er Ger­ard Wil­son said, “Port-of-Spain Prison has re­al­ly out­lived its use­ful­ness.”

Not­ing that cramped con­di­tions and an out­dat­ed de­sign lim­it op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and in­mate pro­grammes, he said, “If you’re look­ing at re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and ref­or­ma­tion, it is not the ide­al place.”

Wil­son al­so point­ed to se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns as­so­ci­at­ed with op­er­at­ing a prison in a dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed ur­ban area. He re­called the 2015 prison es­cape and not­ed the chal­lenges posed dur­ing Car­ni­val, as well as at­tempts by out­siders to smug­gle con­tra­band over the prison walls.

Those con­cerns resur­faced on Sep­tem­ber 20 when prison of­fi­cers in­ter­cept­ed a drone be­lieved to be linked to ef­forts to in­tro­duce pro­hib­it­ed items in­to the fa­cil­i­ty. Sev­er­al peo­ple have al­so been caught throw­ing con­tra­band items over the fa­cil­i­ty’s wall.

Wil­son de­scribed the re­lo­ca­tion as a sen­si­ble move from a se­cu­ri­ty stand­point.

“The re­mand prison is al­ready the most volatile, so I think we could start by re­mov­ing re­mand in­mates,” he said.

He not­ed that re­mand pris­on­ers could be ac­com­mo­dat­ed at the re­fur­bished Re­mand Prison at Gold­en Grove or the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, de­pend­ing on their se­cu­ri­ty clas­si­fi­ca­tion, al­though he said he was un­aware of the cur­rent ca­pac­i­ty at ei­ther fa­cil­i­ty.

While sup­port­ing the clo­sure, Wil­son ac­knowl­edged that the Port-of-Spain Prison’s lo­ca­tion of­fered prac­ti­cal ad­van­tages. Its prox­im­i­ty to the courts made in­mate trans­porta­tion eas­i­er and al­lowed some fam­i­lies eas­i­er ac­cess for vis­its.

De­spite those con­sid­er­a­tions, Wil­son main­tained that de­te­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tions and se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns made clo­sure un­avoid­able.

For Wil­son, how­ev­er, the move is al­so per­son­al. He spent a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of his ca­reer at the prison, work­ing in ar­eas in­clud­ing per­son­nel, ac­counts, in­mate re­cep­tion and dis­charge op­er­a­tions.

“The ex­pe­ri­ences I had at Port-of-Spain Prison are in­valu­able. It’s a place I will al­ways re­mem­ber, even though the lo­ca­tion is no longer suit­able,” he said.

He added that the prison’s his­to­ry should not be for­got­ten and sug­gest­ed part of the fa­cil­i­ty be pre­served as a mu­se­um, not­ing the site could be used to ed­u­cate stu­dents and the wider pub­lic about the coun­try’s cor­rec­tion­al his­to­ry.

Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don has al­so wel­comed ef­forts to mod­ernise prison in­fra­struc­ture, but cau­tioned against sim­ply shift­ing over­crowd­ing from one fa­cil­i­ty to an­oth­er.

“What we have to guard against is trans­fer­ring the pres­sure from one fa­cil­i­ty to an­oth­er,” Gor­don said.

He ar­gued that im­prove­ments are need­ed through­out the prison sys­tem, in­clud­ing at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre and the Re­mand Yard, along­side the con­struc­tion of a prop­er­ly de­signed mod­ern fa­cil­i­ty.

“The an­swer should not be to put every­one in one mas­sive com­pound,” he said.

Gor­don al­so stressed that prison of­fi­cers should be in­volved in plan­ning the tran­si­tion.

For Gor­don, the is­sue ex­tends be­yond the clo­sure of a sin­gle prison.

“The fu­ture of cor­rec­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not sim­ply be about build­ing big­ger pris­ons. It must be about build­ing a bet­ter cor­rec­tion­al sys­tem,” he said.