Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Two weeks af­ter he an­nounced the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to boost the TTPS’ man­pow­er strength to 10,200 of­fi­cers over a phased five-year re­cruit­ment plan, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der now says an ad­di­tion­al 800 prison of­fi­cers will be join­ing the ranks of the Prison Ser­vice in the near fu­ture.

Alexan­der made the re­marks dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress at the Prison Ser­vice’s 84th An­nu­al Sports and Fam­i­ly Day at the Prison Sports and Recre­ation Grounds, Arou­ca, yes­ter­day, where he re­flect­ed on the var­i­ous con­cerns and is­sues raised by act­ing Prison Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­raspe some­time ago.

Alexan­der ad­dressed Cor­raspe di­rect­ly, not­ing that he did not for­get the con­cerns raised, not­ing that he un­der­stood the se­ri­ous­ness of man­pow­er short­ages, giv­en his own past ex­pe­ri­ence as a po­lice of­fi­cer.

“So, Mr Cor­raspe, make room... make room, make room for your 800 re­cruits. I don’t know who or what was done be­fore and I don’t care. My fo­cus is what is be­ing done now.”

The an­nounce­ment was met with cheers from guests seat­ed in the VIP sec­tion of the Prison’s Sports Club and even among prison of­fi­cers who re­mained in for­ma­tion on the field.

Alexan­der al­so em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of the prison ser­vice in wider crime-fight­ing ef­forts, while ac­knowl­edg­ing the chal­lenges con­fronting the in­sti­tu­tion.

“How could we leave an in­sti­tu­tion that is brought in­to ques­tion every day for one rea­son or an­oth­er, un­manned?”

He al­so urged the of­fi­cers to re­main com­mit­ted to their du­ties and the core val­ues of the prison ser­vice, not­ing that while tech­nol­o­gy would help them to do their jobs bet­ter, noth­ing could sub­sti­tute for of­fi­cers with a sin­cere work eth­ic and strong code of ethics.

Speak­ing with the Sun­day Guardian af­ter the for­mal part of the cer­e­mo­ny, Alexan­der ex­plained that the 800 re­cruits have not yet un­der­gone train­ing, but were on file as ap­pli­cants in the prison ser­vice since 2023.

He not­ed that the ap­pli­cants have al­ready been in­ter­viewed, as oth­er out­stand­ing pro­ce­dures, in­clud­ing psy­cho­me­t­ric test­ing, were still to be done.

Cor­raspe said the ad­di­tion of 800 new re­cruits would be wel­comed.

“Un­til we have all the sys­tems in place, we have to main­tain se­cu­ri­ty to en­sure per­sons are not able to es­cape, they are not able to com­mit crimes while in prison, they ought not be able to use cell­phones to cause harm and hurt to the pub­lic, be­cause it de­feats all the good work of the oth­er arms of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.”

Head of the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) Ger­ard Gor­don al­so wel­comed the news. How­ev­er, he said more of­fi­cers would be need­ed to ad­dress chal­lenges with­in the in­sti­tu­tion.