Ot­to Car­ring­ton

On the heels of Sun­day’s prison break in which five in­mates es­caped from the Gold­en Grove Prison in Arou­ca, im­me­di­ate changes will be made to the prison in­fra­struc­ture to en­sure that there is not a re­peat.

This was con­firmed by Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds on Tues­day, fol­low­ing his tour of the fa­cil­i­ty.

Hinds toured the dor­mi­to­ry area, where the five es­capees were housed, along with act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons De­op­er­sad Ra­moutar.

Speak­ing to the me­dia af­ter­wards, Hinds said he will be ap­proach­ing se­nior of­fi­cials in Gov­ern­ment with rec­om­men­da­tions made by Ra­moutar on how best to move for­ward.

“I re­ceived a pre­lim­i­nary re­port which re­flect­ed the events that tran­spired, and I just had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to tour the fa­cil­i­ty and to see the ex­act lo­ca­tion that was used in this es­cape and to have dis­cus­sions with the en­gi­neers of the Pris­ons Ser­vice and the en­gi­neers of the En­gi­neer­ing Corps of the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force and the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Pris­ons Ser­vice. So now, I have to con­tem­plate things that must be done to en­sure that we don’t have a re­cur­rence of this kind of sit­u­a­tion,” Hinds said.

“It is very very trou­bling in­deed, so we toured the fa­cil­i­ty, we looked at the lo­cust of the es­cape, we im­me­di­ate­ly put heads to­geth­er and the ex­perts, the pro­fes­sion­als, en­gi­neers as I say, have worked out some im­me­di­ate so­lu­tions to those par­tic­u­lar prob­lems to hard­en the fort, hard­en the tar­get, more­so as to pre­vent more re­cur­rences so,” he added.

Hinds dis­closed that he was giv­en rec­om­men­da­tions for an in­fra­struc­ture to be in­stalled at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope to on­ly treat with pris­on­ers. This, he said, al­so fol­lowed an in­ci­dent where a pris­on­er who was hos­pi­talised es­caped but was re­cap­tured that same evening.

Hinds said from his in­tel­li­gence, the five in­mates were low-risk pris­on­ers who did not have a his­to­ry of bad be­hav­iour and as such, they were not ex­pect­ing that sort of ac­tion from the men, who would have done fair­ly short sen­tences at the Car­rera Is­land Prison.

“They were brought here four days be­fore the es­cape in or­der to ben­e­fit from train­ing in au­to body straight­en­ing and re­pairs to pre­pare them for a pro­duc­tive re-en­try in­to so­ci­ety and they made an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make good their es­cape. That by it­self left me sad and con­cerned, but the re­sult­ing ac­tions, I must say, have left me very proud as the in­ter-agency ap­proach, from the Po­lice Ser­vice to the De­fence Force, to the Prison Ser­vice, have been very com­mend­able and re­sult­ed in the de­ten­tion of four of the five es­capees with­in 24 hours.

“That is some­thing to be recog­nised and praised, and my in­tel­li­gence is that the last in­di­vid­ual will be ar­rest­ed soon,” the Min­is­ter said.

Ra­moutar told the me­dia he had no in­ten­tions of clos­ing the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme.

“Those in­di­vid­u­als saw an op­por­tu­ni­ty and took it, sad­ly. And an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on its way and if any­one is held cul­pa­ble, yes they will be dealt with.

“And while we have in­creased our vig­i­lance, in no way and no time will we stop our re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes for the in­mates. There is no cor­re­la­tion there.

“Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion is a must, it is part of our man­date and we will con­tin­ue to do those things while we keep check on our se­cu­ri­ty,” Ra­moutar said.

He said they will work on mod­i­fy­ing se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems in the pris­ons.

CLICK FOR MORE NEWS