SHAL­IZA HASANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s prison sys­tem, long plagued by over­crowd­ing, cor­rup­tion, and chaos, is set for a trans­for­ma­tion­al change if the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) has its way.

POA’s pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don is prepar­ing to present to Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der a pro­pos­al for a new mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar pur­pose-built re­mand prison in Gold­en Grove, aimed at ad­dress­ing the prison’s deep­en­ing cri­sis.

The cur­rent prison has been “brought to its knees by crim­i­nal­i­ty” over the years due to in­ter­nal com­pro­mise and gang in­fil­tra­tion.

The unchecked flow of con­tra­band has turned re­mand fa­cil­i­ties in­to hotbeds of vi­o­lence and dis­or­der, com­pro­mis­ing both pub­lic safe­ty and the safe­ty of of­fi­cers and in­mates. 

The POA is hop­ing to re­verse that with a strate­gic plan that iden­ti­fies six ar­eas to root out con­tra­band from jails, pro­vide height­ened se­cu­ri­ty and re­duce de­lays in the jus­tice sys­tem with the con­struc­tion of a new state-of-the-art prison.

The six ar­eas were list­ed as re­duc­ing traf­fick­ing, strength­en­ing se­cu­ri­ty, im­prov­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion­al ef­fi­cien­cy, boost­ing staff morale and safe­ty, sup­port­ing ju­di­cial re­forms and time­ly rul­ings, build­ing a new or­gan­i­sa­tion­al cul­ture and reg­u­la­to­ry re­form, and hu­man dig­ni­ty.

“What I am propos­ing is that prison of­fi­cers will have a view of all the cells from one par­tic­u­lar po­si­tion, equipped with cam­eras and the use of elec­tron­ic gates, perime­ter mon­i­tor­ing and post-event track­ing.”

He said there would be a ded­i­cat­ed en­trance for staff and prison of­fi­cers to avoid en­ter­ing or leav­ing the prison with bags.

This would im­me­di­ate­ly curb con­tra­band from en­ter­ing the prison.

“It would al­so have strate­gic in­mate move­ment con­trol, sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for traf­fick­ing be­tween in­mates, vis­i­tors and staff.”

An­oth­er pro­pos­al is that pris­on­ers wear over­alls so they can be iden­ti­fied.

“It would en­sure that every prison looks the same. So, whether you are a mil­lion­aire or a street dweller, every­one would look uni­formed.”

Pris­on­ers cur­rent­ly use their own cloth­ing and footwear.

He point­ed out that the over­all cost would not be cheap.

Gor­don said the as­so­ci­a­tion would sug­gest that the prison be built with coat­ed three-quar­ter-inch steel in­stead of bricks and ce­ment.

Steel can be cut and re­moved if there are plans to ex­tend or do retro­fitting.

The prison, he said, can be con­struct­ed be­tween six months and a year.

Con­struc­tion would have to be done in phas­es to ac­com­mo­date 1,500 re­mand­ed pris­on­ers, in­clud­ing in­mates from Port-of-Spain and Car­rera pris­ons.

There should be a clear­er sep­a­ra­tion of re­mand­ed and con­vict­ed in­mates, Gor­don said, which is vi­tal for risk man­age­ment and staff work­load.

Hav­ing re­cent­ly called for the clo­sures of Car­rera and Port-of-Spain pris­ons, Gor­don said it costs the State a tidy sum to keep Car­rera op­er­a­tional every month.

He said Gov­ern­ment pays a barge $18,000 to de­liv­er potable wa­ter to the prison for cook­ing, laun­dry, drink­ing, and bathing of pris­on­ers.

“If I am not mis­tak­en, this is done twice a week. There was some talk of set­ting up a de­sali­na­tion plant on the is­land. I don’t know.”

It was sug­gest­ed by Gor­don to trans­form Car­rera and Port-of-Spain pris­ons in­to mu­se­ums where peo­ple can pay a fee to tour the build­ings and learn about their his­to­ry.

The Gov­ern­ment can al­so ben­e­fit by earn­ing rev­enue.

Gor­don said in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial or­gan­i­sa­tions have ex­pressed an in­ter­est in fi­nanc­ing the prison project with re­pay­ment by Gov­ern­ment over time.

“They are will­ing to put out all the mon­ey up front. This would be a long-term in­vest­ment, giv­en the on­go­ing is­sues the prison has been fac­ing for years. You can­not con­cep­tu­alise build­ing any cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ty with­out prop­er se­cu­ri­ty, coun­ter­mea­sures for drone drops, unau­tho­rised cell­phones, OSH stan­dards, deal­ing with the jus­tice sys­tem and con­trolled zones … then you would be play­ing smart with fool­ish­ness.”

Gor­don said he’s hop­ing to meet with Alexan­der soon to dis­cuss the mat­ter fur­ther.

“We can’t con­tin­ue the way we are go­ing, do­ing the same thing over and over and ex­pect­ing dif­fer­ent re­sults.”