JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

A rift ap­pears to be de­vel­op­ing with­in the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, af­ter pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don dis­tanced him­self from a let­ter sent by his gen­er­al sec­re­tary Lester Lo­gie, which is be­lieved to have trig­gered Prison Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­raspe be­ing sent on leave.

Cor­raspe was sent on four months’ leave on Mon­day, af­ter it was re­vealed that Lo­gie had raised the is­sue of his pref­er­en­tial treat­ment of busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve, who are cur­rent­ly in­car­cer­at­ed un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion or­ders at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison and the Women’s Prison in Arou­ca, re­spec­tive­ly.

Su­per­in­ten­dent Elvin Scant­er­bury has been cho­sen to act dur­ing Cor­raspe’s ab­sence.

How­ev­er, in a What­sApp mes­sage to mem­bers, which was leaked on so­cial me­dia, Gor­don said he was not con­sult­ed be­fore the let­ter was sent to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der.

“First and fore­most, I wish to state un­equiv­o­cal­ly that I, as pres­i­dent of the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, was nei­ther con­sult­ed nor in­formed pri­or to the prepa­ra­tion or re­lease of that cor­re­spon­dence. At no time was the mat­ter pre­sent­ed be­fore the ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee for dis­cus­sion, con­sid­er­a­tion, or ap­proval, nor was any man­date sought from the ex­ec­u­tive au­tho­ris­ing such com­mu­ni­ca­tion on be­half of the as­so­ci­a­tion,” Gor­don wrote.

Gor­don said the POA is gov­erned by its con­sti­tu­tion, which es­tab­lish­es clear prin­ci­ples of col­lec­tive lead­er­ship, ac­count­abil­i­ty and de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

“No in­di­vid­ual of­fice bear­er, re­gard­less of po­si­tion, pos­sess­es uni­lat­er­al au­thor­i­ty to adopt pol­i­cy po­si­tions or is­sue cor­re­spon­dence pur­port­ing to rep­re­sent the col­lec­tive views of the as­so­ci­a­tion or its mem­ber­ship, un­less such au­thor­i­ty has been grant­ed in ac­cor­dance with the con­sti­tu­tion or by a de­ci­sion of the ex­ec­u­tive.”

He added, “Just as we ad­vo­cate for fair­ness and due process for our mem­bers in dis­ci­pli­nary mat­ters, we must al­so en­sure that we our­selves ex­er­cise fair­ness be­fore com­ment­ing on mat­ters that may af­fect the pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tion of any mem­ber. Al­le­ga­tions should al­ways be ex­am­ined ob­jec­tive­ly, rel­e­vant facts gath­ered, and those af­fect­ed af­ford­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard be­fore the as­so­ci­a­tion adopts or com­mu­ni­cates a po­si­tion,” Gor­don said.

He added that the en­tire sit­u­a­tion should al­so serve as a re­minder of the im­por­tance of re­spect­ing the POA’s gov­er­nance frame­work.

“These safe­guards pro­tect not on­ly the in­tegri­ty of the as­so­ci­a­tion but al­so every mem­ber who looks to the as­so­ci­a­tion for fair and re­spon­si­ble rep­re­sen­ta­tion.”

How­ev­er, a me­dia re­lease from the POA seemed to take a mid­dle ground.

In the re­lease, PRO Kris Guerero said there was no con­tra­dic­tion in recog­nis­ing two im­por­tant prin­ci­ples be­tween Lo­gie’s let­ter and the au­thor­i­ty giv­en to Cor­raspe to give sup­posed spe­cial treat­ment to in­mates.

“First­ly, the gen­er­al sec­re­tary, act­ing in his ca­pac­i­ty as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the As­so­ci­a­tion, has every right to raise con­cerns or seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion where mem­bers be­lieve there may be is­sues af­fect­ing fair­ness, trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, or the in­tegri­ty of the prison sys­tem. Such cor­re­spon­dence forms part of the As­so­ci­a­tion’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ad­vo­cate on mat­ters brought to its at­ten­tion by its mem­ber­ship,” Guerero said.

The re­lease added that Cor­raspe is law­ful­ly au­tho­rised “to make op­er­a­tional de­ci­sions” re­gard­ing in­mate man­age­ment. It not­ed that both ac­tions are not mu­tu­al­ly ex­clu­sive and it is en­tire­ly pos­si­ble for Cor­raspe to law­ful­ly au­tho­rise spe­cial ac­com­mo­da­tions while, at the same time, Lo­gie could raise ques­tions about the de­ci­sion.

“Ac­count­abil­i­ty and law­ful au­thor­i­ty can co­ex­ist, and trans­paren­cy on­ly strength­ens pub­lic con­fi­dence in our in­sti­tu­tions,” the re­lease said, adding that it was urg­ing the pub­lic to avoid spec­u­la­tion and al­low any nec­es­sary re­view or clar­i­fi­ca­tion to pro­ceed through the ap­pro­pri­ate chan­nels.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der yes­ter­day con­firmed Cor­rasepe’s sus­pen­sion was di­rect­ly linked to his al­leged pref­er­en­tial treat­ment to­wards the Hadeeds. He said it was an in­dict­ment on Cor­raspe af­ter in­mates com­plained about the bi­ased treat­ment.

In a brief in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Alexan­der said Cor­raspe is “prob­a­bly hap­py” on leave.

“If a man have leave, he is en­ti­tled to take his leave. If things hap­pen­ing and man need to get leave, he get leave,” Alexan­der said.

“Lis­ten, if you are in charge of the prison ser­vice and your pris­on­ers com­plain­ing that all of us not get­ting to do the same thing, it’s an in­dict­ment on you, not so? When you treat­ing one child dif­fer­ent­ly from the oth­er child, what does hap­pen in your home?”

But sources with­in the pris­ons sys­tem are deny­ing Cor­raspe was sent on leave due to the let­ter Lo­gie wrote, coun­ter­ing that both he and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Sher­win Bruce were sent on leave a day be­fore Lo­gie’s let­ter. Bruce, who was set to pro­ceed on leave next Jan­u­ary, which would have tak­en him in­to pre-re­tire­ment leave, was asked to pro­ceed on leave which ex­ceed­ed the stip­u­lat­ed 90 days of ac­cu­mu­lat­ed leave.