New­ly ap­point­ed Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les says he in­tends to meet with all the heads of dif­fer­ent arms of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices be­fore dis­cussing or for­mu­lat­ing any an­ti-crime strate­gies.

Gon­za­les, who was sworn in as min­is­ter on Mon­day and took of­fice yes­ter­day, met his pre­de­ces­sor, Fitzger­ald Hinds—who is now the Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter—to be briefed on the cur­rent na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty land­scape.

Gon­za­les was al­so ex­pect­ed to meet with this coun­try’s in­tel­li­gence agen­cies.

He said while the is­sue of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty was a high-pri­or­i­ty is­sue that at­tract­ed con­cern, he want­ed to un­der­stand the full work­ings of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus be­fore com­ment­ing on any pos­si­ble strate­gies.

“It’s re­al­ly to meet with the ad­min­is­tra­tion, the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, and some of the heads of the key agen­cies to be brought up to speed, and from then we will de­ter­mine the key strate­gies mov­ing for­ward.

“I don’t plan to talk about strate­gies as yet, be­cause I be­lieve it would be pru­dent for me to meet and to hear di­rect­ly from the heads of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies so that I can speak to the coun­try con­fi­dent­ly on what we plan to do in the short to medi­um term.”

In ad­di­tion to yes­ter­day’s brief­in­gs, Gon­za­les added that he was in­struct­ed by new­ly ap­point­ed Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to have “ur­gent meet­ings” with the heads of dif­fer­ent na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies with­in the next 24 hours, in­clud­ing act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin.

A me­dia re­lease from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty yes­ter­day con­firmed that Gon­za­les dis­cussed “on­go­ing se­cu­ri­ty ini­tia­tives and key pol­i­cy mat­ters.”

Con­tact­ed for com­ment act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­raspe said his or­gan­i­sa­tion was will­ing and pre­pared to work un­der Gon­za­les’ lead­er­ship.

He not­ed that while he did not want to “pre­empt” any meet­ings with the min­is­ter, he said ar­eas of prison in­fra­struc­ture, the safe­ty of of­fi­cers out­side of prison fa­cil­i­ties, and skills train­ing for staff were among the top pri­or­i­ties to dis­cuss.

“We’re talk­ing about man­ag­ing our staff re­sources in such a way to al­low the prison ser­vice to train and de­vel­op its of­fi­cers to be able to achieve the gov­ern­ment’s man­date.

“But for me, it’s al­ways a sit­u­a­tion where the glass is half full and not half emp­ty be­cause our job and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to man­age so we work with­in the con­straints.”

Gon­za­les is the fifth Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter to be ap­point­ed since the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment as­sumed pow­er in 2015.