RHON­DOR DOWLAT 

The Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion has ap­point­ed Car­los Cor­raspe as the Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons, ef­fec­tive Ju­ly 9, the T&T Prison Ser­vice an­nounced yes­ter­day.

He has over 35 years of ex­ten­sive ser­vice and ex­pe­ri­ence, hav­ing held var­i­ous roles with­in the Ad­min­is­tra­tive, Op­er­a­tional, and Pro­gramme branch­es of the Prison Ser­vice.

Cor­raspe said he aimed to trans­form the Prison Ser­vice in­to a cor­rec­tions sys­tem with a stronger fo­cus on pub­lic safe­ty and crime pre­ven­tion through the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of of­fend­ers. He said his ap­proach would in­clude ad­dress­ing sev­er­al long­stand­ing is­sues, such as the lack of ve­hi­cles, in­fra­struc­ture short­com­ings, and uni­form pro­vi­sions.

A sig­nif­i­cant con­cern at the top of Cor­raspe’s agen­da is the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of prison of­fi­cers.

Pres­i­dent of the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion, Ger­ard Gor­don, said Cor­raspe’s ap­point­ment sig­nalled a wel­come change in man­age­ment ap­proach. 

He not­ed that they had al­ready met with Cor­raspe twice and ap­pre­ci­at­ed the more col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach to ad­dress­ing the is­sues fac­ing the Prison Ser­vice and its of­fi­cers. 

“Mr. Cor­raspe’s sub­stan­tive rank is that of Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent, so he is cur­rent­ly act­ing three or four ranks high­er,” Gor­don stat­ed. 

He em­pha­sised the need for the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion to ad­dress this and en­sure prop­er pro­mo­tions with­in the ser­vice, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the up­per ranks, to pre­vent of­fi­cers from re­main­ing in abeyance for too long. “We hope that is some­thing they should cor­rect, but we are in full sup­port of the new act­ing com­mis­sion­er, and he too, through his ac­tions, has shown his sup­port for the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion,” Gor­don added.

Gor­don em­pha­sised the on­go­ing threats that of­fi­cers faced as a re­sult of a lack of re­sources and an in­crease in crime, which has re­sult­ed in the tar­get­ing and even mur­der of prison of­fi­cers.

“Once we are able to put a han­dle on that, cer­tain­ly we could see re­sound­ing ben­e­fits for the en­tire ser­vice,” he said.