RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The pro­posed Tamana Prison Com­plex re­mains in the pro­cure­ment stage, with Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials con­firm­ing that the project will pro­ceed through an open ten­der process un­der the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act 2015.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lene John said the project is cur­rent­ly be­ing man­aged by UDe­COTT and is not yet at a stage where de­tails can be pub­licly dis­cussed.

“The chair­man-UDe­COTT has ad­vised that the Tamana Prison Com­plex project is sub­ject to a pro­cure­ment process in­volv­ing an open ten­der in which a Re­quest for Pro­pos­als would fol­low in due course in ac­cor­dance with the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act 2015. In this re­gard, it would be high­ly in­ap­pro­pri­ate for UDe­COTT to com­ment at this stage,” John said.

The Tamana project, first out­lined in No­vem­ber 2025, is be­ing po­si­tioned as a ma­jor re­struc­tur­ing of the prison sys­tem, with plans cen­tred on the de­vel­op­ment of a mod­ern cor­rec­tion­al cam­pus in the Tamana In­tech Park re­gion.

The pro­pos­al in­cludes the de­com­mis­sion­ing of the Port- of-Spain Prison on Fred­er­ick Street, a fa­cil­i­ty long de­scribed as out­dat­ed.

The new Tamana com­plex is al­so ex­pect­ed to in­cor­po­rate high-se­cu­ri­ty de­sign fea­tures, in­clud­ing bio­met­ric ac­cess sys­tems, com­part­men­talised hous­ing for high-risk in­mates and up­grad­ed fa­cil­i­ties in­tend­ed to meet in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards for in­mate wel­fare.

Au­thor­i­ties have al­so in­di­cat­ed that the de­sign would in­clude re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and vo­ca­tion­al spaces, as part of a broad­er pol­i­cy shift com­bin­ing max­i­mum-se­cu­ri­ty con­tain­ment with rein­te­gra­tion pro­grammes aimed at re­duc­ing re­cidi­vism.

Last week, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der said steps are al­ready be­ing tak­en to re­duce pres­sure on Port-of-Spain Prison, which he said was nev­er in­tend­ed to ac­com­mo­date its cur­rent in­mate pop­u­la­tion.

He said high-risk in­mates and al­leged gang lead­ers have al­ready been re­lo­cat­ed to more se­cure al­ter­na­tive fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing De­fence Force-con­trolled sites in Ch­aguara­mas, as part of in­ter­im mea­sures to de­cen­tralise the prison pop­u­la­tion.

Da­ta from World Prison Brief says up to 2025, there were 2,389 re­mand pris­on­ers out of a to­tal prison pop­u­la­tion of 3,999. The re­mand pop­u­la­tion ac­counts for al­most 60 per cent of pris­on­ers, and this places pres­sure on the sys­tem, prison sources said.

Min­is­ter Alexan­der has pre­vi­ous­ly high­light­ed the back­log in the courts, not­ing that while re­mand­ed in­mates are legal­ly pre­sumed in­no­cent, their pro­longed de­ten­tion con­tin­ues to con­tribute to over­crowd­ing.

He has called on the ju­di­cia­ry to ac­cel­er­ate case flow man­age­ment to re­duce the num­ber of peo­ple await­ing tri­al and ease the bur­den on prison fa­cil­i­ties.

While long-term in­fra­struc­ture plans such as the Tamana com­plex are be­ing de­vel­oped, Alexan­der has al­so di­rect­ed short-term in­ter­ven­tions across ex­ist­ing pris­ons, in­clud­ing main­te­nance work, se­cu­ri­ty up­grades and ba­sic fa­cil­i­ty im­prove­ments aimed at im­prov­ing con­di­tions for staff and in­mates.

Last month in a Sun­day Guardian ex­clu­sive, Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (PoA) pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don said over­crowd­ing has fun­da­men­tal­ly al­tered op­er­a­tions in­side cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties.

He warned that staff are now re­quired to su­per­vise in­mate pop­u­la­tions well be­yond in­tend­ed ca­pac­i­ty, of­ten with lim­it­ed man­pow­er and re­sources.

“When in­sti­tu­tions are hous­ing far be­yond their in­tend­ed ca­pac­i­ty, the risk to safe­ty es­ca­lates dra­mat­i­cal­ly,” he said.

Gor­don said the sit­u­a­tion is com­pound­ed by de­te­ri­o­rat­ing in­fra­struc­ture, san­i­ta­tion chal­lenges and short­ages of es­sen­tial re­sources, all of which af­fect both safe­ty and morale.

He al­so raised con­cern about the grow­ing dif­fi­cul­ty of sep­a­rat­ing high-risk in­mates with­in over­crowd­ed fa­cil­i­ties, warn­ing that this cre­ates con­di­tions in which prison gangs and in­ter­nal crim­i­nal net­works can strength­en.

He added that pro­longed de­ten­tion with­out con­vic­tion leaves many in­mates idle, with lim­it­ed ac­cess to struc­tured re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion or ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grammes.