Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der has con­firmed the Port of Spain Prison will be de­com­mis­sioned, de­scrib­ing the move as “a his­toric de­ci­sion” that ends 268 years of op­er­a­tions at the fa­cil­i­ty.

He said the prison, built in 1757, has long been con­demned by the courts as un­fit for hous­ing in­mates. Alexan­der said the gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed it made no sense to con­tin­ue pay­ing mil­lions in com­pen­sa­tion to pris­on­ers for breach­es of their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

“This fa­cil­i­ty is an eye­sore. When you come in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go and you go to the city, peo­ple take you to the prison, they of­ten ask you, you have per­sons in there? And the an­swer is yes. Rather than con­tin­u­ing pay­ing com­pen­sa­tion to pris­on­ers for breach of their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights by hous­ing them in fa­cil­i­ties that are sub-hu­man and de­grad­ing, the gov­ern­ment will save mon­ey and in­vest in­stead in a state-of-the-art prison fa­cil­i­ty mod­ernised to as­sist in re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and restora­tive jus­tice,” Alexan­der said at the post-Cab­i­net brief­ing.

The an­nounce­ment fol­lows Alexan­der’s ear­li­er com­ments that the fa­cil­i­ty would be closed, af­ter pho­tos cir­cu­lat­ed on­line of a man throw­ing con­tra­band over the prison walls.

He out­lined that the clo­sure would take place in four phas­es, be­gin­ning with the re­lo­ca­tion of re­mand and con­demned pris­on­ers to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison at Gold­en Grove, Arou­ca. Con­vict­ed pris­on­ers will al­so be moved to Gold­en Grove as part of the process.

Alexan­der added that plans in­clude con­struc­tion of new gal­lows at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison.

He al­so said con­sul­ta­tions had been held with the Port of Spain busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, which he de­scribed as sup­port­ive of the prison’s re­lo­ca­tion.

When asked by re­porters how many in­mates are cur­rent­ly housed at the Port of Spain Prison and at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, Alexan­der was un­able to pro­vide fig­ures.