The Gov­ern­ment is in­ten­si­fy­ing its fight against crime and is tak­ing its ef­forts to the prison ser­vice. The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter re­vealed that eight search­es have been car­ried out since June 6 and have “stepped up in the last few days” across all pris­ons.

He named the Port-of-Spain Prison, Women’s Prison, East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre, Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, “and the like.”

The re­main­ing fa­cil­i­ties in­clude Car­rera Con­vict Prison, Gold­en Grove Prison, Re­mand Prison, and To­ba­go Con­vict De­pot.

In those search­es, 1,549 grammes of mar­i­jua­na, 43 im­pro­vised weapons, 94 cell­phones, and cig­a­rettes—which the min­is­ter de­scribed as “a very im­por­tant prison econ­o­my item” that is sold for as much as $1,000 each with a pack cost­ing $2,000—were seized.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, con­stant work is be­ing done to lim­it con­tact be­tween crim­i­nal el­e­ments with­in the prison sys­tem and their co­horts in pub­lic.

And while this is pos­i­tive news, he has once again lament­ed the in­volve­ment of prison of­fi­cers in the traf­fick­ing of con­tra­band.

“These, as I demon­strat­ed, I hope, com­pre­hen­sive­ly to you, con­tribute to the crimes, mur­der, and all kinds of things on the out­side. So, while we are re­spond­ing to it as a state through the po­lice and through the law-abid­ing prison of­fi­cers and those who stay true to their oaths, there are those among the prison ser­vice who are ... they are equal­ly per­sis­tent and fight­ing be­cause you clear the jail to­day of phones and by to­mor­row, if you eh care­ful, more phones there again to make more calls to car­ry on the big busi­ness and crim­i­nal­i­ty.”

He sought to re­mind the pub­lic that with­in the last few years, sev­er­al prison of­fi­cers “who are like mules” have been ar­rest­ed and charged for car­ry­ing con­tra­band in­to the prison.

Hinds as­sures that law en­force­ment is con­tin­u­ing to iden­ti­fy and ar­rest rogue prison of­fi­cers.