Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

Prison of­fi­cers had to call in ad­di­tion­al re­in­force­ment from a spe­cial unit to quell an­oth­er at­tempt at an up­ris­ing at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca yes­ter­day.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that in­mates were protest­ing the fail­ure of the ju­di­cial sys­tem be­cause they were not be­ing tak­en be­fore their judges and mag­is­trates for mat­ters.

Prison sources said there was a stand-off be­tween in­mates and of­fi­cers some time af­ter 2 pm yes­ter­day, where in­mates al­leged­ly threw their meals on the ground while cussing and quar­relling with the of­fi­cers. Of­fi­cers were al­so threat­ened. 

A call for back-up was placed and armed of­fi­cers from a spe­cial unit were called in to help quell the sit­u­a­tion. Guardian Me­dia was told the of­fi­cers from the spe­cial unit were told to use rub­ber bul­lets if it reached to that.

“This is how they re­spond when you mak­ing noise to go to court to see a judge, to see the mag­is­trates, to see the judge’s in the ap­peal courts and the in­mates are not get­ting this right now be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and no oth­er mea­sure is be­ing put in place for vir­tu­al hear­ings as promised by the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties,” the prison source said.

The special prison unit that was called in to quell the uprising at the Maximum Security Prison in Arouca yesterday.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Den­nis Pul­chan said: “As it stands, it is their food they have thrown away…I was in­formed and I told the Su­per­in­ten­dent of Pris­ons to do his job and re­solve the is­sue.”

Pul­chan said he would not con­done any type of vi­o­lence from in­mates.

“I won’t let in­mates use vi­o­lence to make a point. The MSP is filled with COVID-19 and most of the court ad­min­is­tra­tors are not com­ing to the MSP…We had dis­cus­sions to train of­fi­cers to han­dle the vir­tu­al courts. For the time be­ing...that train­ing from the Ju­di­cia­ry has not com­menced.”

Over the past weeks ten­sions have been ris­ing among in­mates, es­pe­cial­ly at the MSP and Re­mand Yard at Gold­en Grove, where to date 260 in­mates have test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus.

Last week (No­vem­ber 18), some in­mates cur­rent­ly in the quar­an­tine sec­tion at MSP al­so at­tempt­ed a ri­ot but that was quick­ly quelled. Sev­er­al videos have been up­loaded on so­cial me­dia show­ing poor un­san­i­tary con­di­tions at the pris­ons, with in­mates ex­press­ing fear for their health now that COVID has pen­e­trat­ed the prison sys­tem.

Acting Commissioner of Prisons Dennis Pulchan.

Last week, the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion called on the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Min­istry of Health to recog­nise that the prison rep­re­sents “an ex­plo­sive set of cir­cum­stances that re­quire a very fo­cused and ag­gres­sive re­sponse to en­sure the lives of the of­fi­cers and in­mates are pro­tect­ed as much as pos­si­ble.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion said the pro­vi­sion of PPE equip­ment is ei­ther in­suf­fi­cient or ab­sent and called for ac­tion.