Joel Julien

The T&T Prison Ser­vice has sus­pend­ed all on­line trans­fers and de­posits to its Re­pub­lic Bank ac­count, fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of a se­ries of fraud­u­lent trans­ac­tions by pris­on­ers ac­cess­ing the can­teen ser­vice.

Last year, the Prison Ser­vice in­tro­duced its Com­mis­sary Ser­vice due to re­stric­tions aris­ing out of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“With the COVID-19 guide­lines im­ple­ment­ed, pro­vi­sions have been made so that friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers can de­posit funds to their loved ones’ ac­counts with­out hav­ing to vis­it the fa­cil­i­ty,” the Prison Ser­vice stat­ed.

It was meant to help the loved ones of pris­on­ers send mon­ey through Re­pub­lic Bank so the in­mates could ac­cess the can­teen fa­cil­i­ty more eas­i­ly.

A com­mis­sary or can­teen is a store with­in a fa­cil­i­ty from which of­fend­ers can pur­chase a va­ri­ety of food and per­son­al items.

This is fa­cil­i­tat­ed through a sys­tem where­by mon­e­tary ac­counts are cre­at­ed for of­fend­ers. Friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers can de­posit mon­ey in­to the ac­counts to al­low for the pur­chase of items from the com­mis­sary.

This fa­cil­i­ty is avail­able to both re­mand­ed and con­vict­ed of­fend­ers.

The process for the Com­mis­sary Sys­tem was sim­ple enough.

Peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in send­ing funds for the in­mates just had to de­posit the funds to the Prison Ser­vices Recre­ation­al Sports and Cul­tur­al Club at Re­pub­lic Bank, with the name of the in­mate as well as the prison they are in. The max­i­mum amount al­lowed per month is $1,200.

The de­pos­i­tors would then send a pic­ture of the re­ceipt via What­sApp to the Prison Ser­vice’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment or the Can­teen Of­fice.

How­ev­er, some peo­ple found a loop­hole in the process and have been tak­ing ad­van­tage of it.

“Some cus­tomers were at­tempt­ing fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ties, where they were pho­to­copy­ing re­ceipts and sub­mit­ting it to us to sort of get twice and even three times the amount of mon­ey that was de­posit­ed,” act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er De­op­er­sad Ra­moutar told Guardian Me­dia in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

“We thought that was the end of the mat­ter but it kept hap­pen­ing fre­quent­ly.”

He said the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and Re­pub­lic Bank of­fi­cials are now in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mat­ter.

“We have tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed that ser­vice and re­turned to the con­ven­tion­al form for the can­teen,” he said.

Now, peo­ple wish­ing to de­posit mon­ey for their loved ones to use in the prison can­teen can on­ly do so us­ing ei­ther cash or Linx by vis­it­ing the Gold­en Grove Prison in Arou­ca.

Ra­moutar said the on­line Com­mis­sary Sys­tem was be­ing used by the loved ones of in­mates.

“The sys­tem is over­sub­scribed. Peo­ple ap­par­ent­ly love their in­mates on the in­side quite a lot and we are try­ing to man­age as best in meet­ing the needs,” Ra­moutar said.

“There are times when the in­mates com­plain they are not get­ting their items quick­ly enough, we have a three-day wait­ing pe­ri­od and they have as­signed more staff to work much more quick­ly on that,” he added.

Ra­moutar said he is cer­tain the sit­u­a­tion will be rec­ti­fied.

On Au­gust 20, then com­mis­sion­er of pris­ons, Den­nis Pul­chan, un­veiled and of­fi­cial­ly de­clared the Gold­en Grove Can­teen Ex­ten­sion “open for busi­ness.”

Pul­chan had said the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic brought the need for in­creased va­ri­ety, stock and space be­came more ev­i­dent.