ECRC without power for much of Monday night

The East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre was with­out elec­tric­i­ty for sev­er­al hours yes­ter­day, ac­cord­ing to a re­port re­ceived by the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said it was told the fa­cil­i­ty lost pow­er around 5:40 p.m. and was in dark­ness. The as­so­ci­a­tion com­plained that there was no back­up gen­er­a­tor.

The fa­cil­i­ty hous­es de­tainees, in­clud­ing some be­ing held un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders who are due to be re­leased in batch­es to­day.

When Guardian Me­dia drove past the fa­cil­i­ty around 11 p.m. yes­ter­day, the ECRC was still in dark­ness.

It is un­clear when elec­tric­i­ty was re­stored.

In a wider state­ment on the re­sources avail­able to the Prison Ser­vice, as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don de­scribed in­ad­e­quate re­sources, fail­ing in­fra­struc­ture and out­dat­ed se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems as threats to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

Gor­don said the Prison Ser­vice could not be ex­pect­ed to pro­tect so­ci­ety while op­er­at­ing with out­dat­ed in­fra­struc­ture and in­ad­e­quate re­sources.

He ar­gued that in­vest­ment in the ser­vice should be treat­ed as an in­vest­ment in pub­lic safe­ty, in­clud­ing spend­ing on se­cu­ri­ty tech­nol­o­gy, in­fra­struc­ture, staffing and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

The Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion has pre­vi­ous­ly raised con­cerns about con­di­tions and re­sources with­in the prison sys­tem.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice says 276 re­vo­ca­tion or­ders have been ex­e­cut­ed, re­sult­ing in the re­lease of 187 peo­ple as of Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 14. An­oth­er 89 peo­ple re­main in cus­tody on oth­er mat­ters.