Six days af­ter a pris­on­er was killed dur­ing a vi­o­lent out­break at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP), Gold­en Grove Road, Pi­ar­co—lead­ing to sev­er­al lock­downs and in­creased se­cu­ri­ty—the Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er says nor­mal­cy has been re­turn­ing to the prison.

In­mate Brent Bap­tiste was stabbed to death dur­ing a clash be­tween ri­val gangs on April 5, by oth­er in­mates who used im­pro­vised weapons to car­ry out the act.

This out­break came three days af­ter a loaded pis­tol was found in a prison block at the MSP on April 2.

Act­ing on in­for­ma­tion back then, law en­force­ment of­fi­cials said they con­duct­ed thor­ough search­es of the MSP over sev­en and a half hours and re­cov­ered the gun and sev­en rounds of 9 mm am­mu­ni­tion, along with sev­en cell­phones and ten im­pro­vised weapons.

A sim­i­lar search was car­ried out at the Port-of-Spain Prison (Roy­al Gaol) on April 3, where sev­er­al cell­phones and a num­ber of im­pro­vised weapons and il­le­gal drugs were found.

Con­tact­ed for an up­date yes­ter­day, act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­raspe said, “In re­spect of the MSP, the se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols re­main in place in, so far for a min­i­mum num­ber of in­mates to be out of their cells at any giv­en time.”

He as­sured, “We con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor to re­duce any pos­si­ble reprisal ac­tion that may be con­tem­plat­ed in the af­ter­math of last Sat­ur­day’s oc­cur­rences at the prison.”

Cor­raspe re­vealed that fam­i­ly vis­its had re­sumed yes­ter­day morn­ing, with in­mates once again be­ing al­lowed to place or­ders from the prison can­teen.

“Some re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive pro­grammes have been al­lowed, with key ac­cent on con­trol of the num­bers,” the Com­mis­sion­er fur­ther stat­ed.

Mean­while, the in­mates’ court at­ten­dance and clin­ics al­so con­tin­ue, he said, in­di­cat­ing, “These had not been sus­pend­ed.”

Cor­rapse said, “We con­tin­ue to re­mind staff of the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing the se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols that have been ini­ti­at­ed at the prison since the sit­u­a­tion re­mains fraught with pos­si­ble reprisals, which we can­not af­ford.”

Asked to re­spond to con­fir­ma­tion by po­lice of­fi­cials ear­li­er this week, that con­sid­er­a­tion was be­ing giv­en to the in­stal­la­tion of a ge­ofence at the MSP af­ter one man was ar­rest­ed and eight drones seized, Cor­raspe said, “In terms of the counter-drone ini­tia­tives, I have been en­gag­ing key dis­cus­sions with all con­cerned in­clud­ing the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty, the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty, and oth­er arms of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices and the pri­vate sec­tor on this mat­ter.”

Ge­ofenc­ing is a type of lo­ca­tion-based sys­tem in which a mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tion or soft­ware us­es the Glob­al Po­si­tion­ing Sys­tem, ra­dio fre­quen­cy iden­ti­fi­ca­tion or cel­lu­lar da­ta to de­fine a vir­tu­al ge­o­graph­i­cal bound­ary and trig­ger a tar­get­ed ac­tion when a de­vice en­ters or ex­ists that bound­ary.

Cor­raspe said, “The ge­ofence is one of many an­ti-drone strate­gies which we have been re­view­ing.”

He went on, “We are ex­am­in­ing all op­tions to en­sure that the an­ti-drone so­lu­tion we even­tu­al­ly em­ploy, will bring the best so­lu­tion to this very press­ing prob­lem.”