Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don has again called for the im­me­di­ate clo­sure of the Port-of-Spain Prison and Car­rera Is­land Con­vict Prison, say­ing the cen­tu­ry-old in­sti­tu­tions are no longer fit for pur­pose and con­tin­ue to place strain on both prison staff and the pub­lic.

In a strong­ly word­ed state­ment ti­tled Time to Shut the Gates on the Past, Gor­don said the fa­cil­i­ties be­long to a dif­fer­ent era and are in­ca­pable of sup­port­ing a mod­ern cor­rec­tion­al sys­tem.

“Every year, mil­lions are spent try­ing to keep these fa­cil­i­ties op­er­a­tional, even though their phys­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions make it im­pos­si­ble to de­liv­er mod­ern cor­rec­tion­al ser­vices ef­fec­tive­ly. These are costs the State can­not con­tin­ue to ab­sorb when bet­ter so­lu­tions ex­ist,” he said.

Gor­don re­newed the as­so­ci­a­tion’s call for the con­struc­tion of a pur­pose-built re­mand prison de­signed for to­day’s needs, with in­te­grat­ed court­rooms, im­proved se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture, and sys­tems to re­duce con­tra­band and in­mate trans­porta­tion risks.

He point­ed out that near­ly 75 per cent of the prison pop­u­la­tion re­mains un­con­vict­ed and on re­mand—many for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods—dri­ving up costs. He es­ti­mat­ed that hous­ing a re­mand in­mate costs the State ap­prox­i­mate­ly $20,000 per month once se­cu­ri­ty, trans­porta­tion, health­care and court-re­lat­ed costs are fac­tored in.

“A mod­ern, pur­pose-built re­mand prison would dra­mat­i­cal­ly im­prove this sit­u­a­tion,” he said.

“Con­tin­u­ing to spend mil­lions main­tain­ing two crum­bling in­sti­tu­tions is not just in­ef­fi­cient, it is ir­re­spon­si­ble.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion’s call comes 67 days af­ter Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der ac­knowl­edged the need to con­sid­er re­mov­ing the prison from the cap­i­tal. At a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing on May 30, Alexan­der said, “Port-of-Spain is our city; we re­al­ly are not sup­posed to have a jail in the city … It’s some­thing we need to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, to re­move that eye­sore from the heart of the city.”

Gor­don al­so ref­er­enced the 2015 jail­break as a key ex­am­ple of why the city’s prison pos­es an on­go­ing pub­lic safe­ty risk.

“When things go wrong with the prison, it is felt in­stan­ta­neous­ly by the pub­lic,” he said.

The POA’s re­newed call fol­lows a re­cent breach of prison se­cu­ri­ty that was cap­tured on video and wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia. In the video, a man is seen toss­ing two black bags over the Fred­er­ick Street prison wall be­fore run­ning away in broad day­light.

Gor­don said the cur­rent sys­tem con­tin­ues to place of­fi­cers at risk and fails to serve the pub­lic’s in­ter­est. “Our of­fi­cers de­serve to work in an en­vi­ron­ment that sup­ports their mis­sion. The pub­lic de­serves a sys­tem that serves jus­tice more ef­fec­tive­ly. And our na­tion de­serves fa­cil­i­ties that re­flect the stan­dards of a mod­ern so­ci­ety.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Min­is­ter Alexan­der for fur­ther com­ment but re­ceived no re­sponse up to late yes­ter­day.