JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion Ger­ard Gor­don is again rais­ing the is­sue of space at the coun­try’s pris­ons as de­tainees un­der the State of Emer­gency in­crease al­most dai­ly.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Gor­don said that de­spite the short­com­ings at the pris­ons, of­fi­cers must make the most of what they have.

“The is­sue of ac­com­mo­da­tion, space, in­fra­struc­ture al­low­ing for the safe keep­ing of not on­ly de­tainees, but pris­on­ers al­ways is a chal­lenge for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice. It’s no se­cret that we con­tin­ue to op­er­ate in fa­cil­i­ties that some have out­lived their use­ful­ness, oth­ers are in a hor­ren­dous state of dis­re­pair due to lack of main­te­nance and up­keep, but we re­main in the un­en­vi­able po­si­tion that we are un­able to say no.”

He added, “Once some­body is ar­rest­ed, charged and they come to us on a war­rant, we have to find space for them and that is the catch-22 of the sit­u­a­tion.”

His con­cerns came two weeks af­ter the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the as­so­ci­a­tion, Lester Lo­gie, raised the is­sue, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the prison ser­vice was ad­dress­ing a chick­en­pox out­break at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP).

While the MSP was not de­clared a de­ten­tion cen­tre un­der the SoE, in­mates there are be­ing trans­ferred to oth­er pris­ons that are de­ten­tion cen­tres be­cause of the chick­en­pox out­break.

Added to that, in­mates were al­ready be­ing trans­ferred out of the Port-of-Spain Prison, which was de­com­mis­sioned last year.

Lo­gie said then, “We are chal­lenged with space. We have the out­break at MSP and you would find that in­mates are be­ing sent to Port-of-Spain Prison now. How­ev­er, there was a di­rec­tive to de­com­mis­sion that fa­cil­i­ty and it should have been more or less start­ed by April.

“The num­bers are ris­ing at Port-of-Spain Prison be­cause they can­not send any­body to MSP now be­cause they haven’t got­ten that chick­en­pox sit­u­a­tion un­der con­trol.”

There were over 150 pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­ders is­sued dur­ing the last SoE. A to­tal of 117 de­tainees were lat­er re­leased. So far, around 30 de­ten­tion or­ders have been is­sued un­der the lat­est SoE, with more ex­pect­ed.

“It means that how­ev­er they spread them out amongst those fa­cil­i­ties will be a chal­lenge. It means that the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC), San­ta Rosa, might be over­crowd­ed. Prob­a­bly done maxed out al­ready,” Lo­gie said.

Calls and mes­sages to Act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­raspe went unan­swered up to press time.

Lo­gie said while spac­ing re­mains an is­sue, the SoE did not stop peo­ple from throw­ing con­tra­band in­to the pris­ons through the use of drones and oth­er meth­ods.