The heads of pris­ons across the Caribbean have tak­en a de­ci­sion to re­lease spe­cif­ic pris­on­ers to re­duce the prison pop­u­la­tion in light of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

News of the move came in a CARI­COM IM­PACS me­dia re­lease ear­ly Wednes­day, in which they in­di­cat­ed that pris­ons would be tak­ing proac­tive mea­sures to pro­tect prison of­fi­cers, in­mates, and vis­i­tors against the spread of the virus in pris­ons.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so made the an­nounce­ment at the Min­istry of Health’s up­date on the virus hours lat­er, say­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi will work out the de­tails of this lat­er on.

The CARI­COM re­lease on the de­ci­sion stat­ed, "Pro­pos­als by prison heads to re­duce COVID-19 in pri­ons at the meet­ing in­clud­ed the ear­ly re­lease of non-vi­o­lent and sick and el­der­ly in­mates who pose ab­solute­ly no threat to so­ci­ety but on­ly serve to in­crease the con­cen­tra­tion of per­sons in pris­ons; in­creased screen­ing of staff and pris­on­ers; en­hanced in­for­ma­tion shar­ing among pris­on­ers and the de­vel­op­ment of na­tion­al prison pan­dem­ic plans."

The rec­om­men­da­tion was made fol­low­ing a meet­ing with heads of cor­rec­tion­al ser­vices and pris­ons last Wednes­day via a video con­fer­enc­ing meet­ing, the re­lease added.

The meet­ing al­so dis­cussed pos­si­ble ways to keep in­mates in touch with their fam­i­lies and loved ones, since vis­i­ta­tion rights have been sus­pend­ed in most coun­tries. The CARI­COM IM­PACS re­lease said to ease this bur­den, "com­mu­ni­ca­tion is be­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed through con­trolled What­sApp and Face Time video calls."

Guardian Me­dia sent a What­sApp ques­tion to act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Den­nis Pul­chan ask­ing how many pris­on­ers will be re­leased based on this premise. How­ev­er, he has not yet re­spond­ed to the ques­tion.