Sev­en­teen prison of­fi­cers are still out on sick leave, but the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons as­sures every­thing is “sta­ble” one week af­ter a ri­ot at the Port-of-Spain Prison on Fred­er­ick Street.

Mean­while, the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to what sparked the al­ter­ca­tion last Tues­day, which re­sult­ed in the death of in­mate Sher­lon Brown and left oth­ers in­jured, is still on­go­ing.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice has con­firmed that it has launched a probe in­to Brown’s death.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er De­op­er­sad Ra­moutar said, “The prison is sta­ble, the at­mos­phere is peace­ful, fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent in­mates are re­morse­ful, of­fi­cers are re­morse­ful. It is un­for­tu­nate that of­fi­cers and in­mates work as a fam­i­ly un­der one roof and they would have had a sig­nif­i­cant fall out and one thing led to an­oth­er with in­mates ri­ot­ing.”

And while the in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues, Ra­moutar said so far, apart from height­ened vig­i­lance, he does not be­lieve it war­rants any op­er­a­tional changes.

“We are just on ex­tra vig­i­lant alert if there’s any fall­out at oth­er sta­tions, but it isn’t like any­thing was short­com­ing or neg­li­gent on my of­fi­cers’ be­half so there are not any cor­rec­tive mea­sures to take place,” he sought to as­sure.

He said all in­jured in­mates have re­turned to prison.

“All in­mates are back in­side the prison they have been dis­charged from the hos­pi­tal, of­fi­cers re­main in­jured and are on sick leave. Some would have got­ten ex­tend­ed sick leave, but the pris­on­ers are calm and peace­ful, and the of­fi­cers re­main strong and re­silient,” Ra­moutar said.

He added some of the of­fi­cers were in crit­i­cal con­di­tion, but they are now sta­ble.

He said coun­selling was of­fered to in­mates and the fam­i­ly of the pris­on­er who died, but Ra­moutar said none have tak­en them up on their of­fer.

“How­ev­er, we will ap­proach them again when the ten­sions and emo­tions calm down so there would not be any an­i­mos­i­ty,” Ra­moutar said.

The Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er said both in­mates and of­fi­cers have re­flect­ed on what tran­spired and are look­ing to heal now.

He added, there is no set time for the com­ple­tion of their in­ves­ti­ga­tion as he wants a thor­ough ex­am­i­na­tion of the is­sue.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred at Cell Block D, Cell 5, when an of­fi­cer was es­cort­ing a high-risk in­mate back to his cell af­ter he re­ceived med­ical at­ten­tion at the in­fir­mary. It was al­leged the in­mate re­fused to fol­low in­struc­tions and en­gaged the of­fi­cer in a volatile man­ner, lead­ing to an up­roar that es­ca­lat­ed. Sev­er­al oth­er in­mates rushed to his de­fence as the of­fi­cer at­tempt­ed to re­strain him. The of­fi­cer’s col­leagues then re­spond­ed to as­sist their col­league.

Of­fi­cials said the con­fronta­tion was brought un­der con­trol with­in ten min­utes of it erupt­ing at 10.15 am.