Justice Minister promises recruitment of 800 new prisons officers

KE­JAN HAYNES

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

Gov­ern­ment plans to re­cruit 800 new prison of­fi­cers with­in months, as part of a broad­er push to strength­en the coun­try’s prison sys­tem un­der the pro­posed Pa­role Bill 2026.

The an­nounce­ment came from Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj dur­ing de­bate on the leg­is­la­tion in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to­day, where he de­fend­ed the bill against crit­i­cism from Op­po­si­tion MPs and out­lined what he de­scribed as a “whole of jus­tice sec­tor ap­proach” to prison re­form.

“With­in a few months, the prison ser­vice is go­ing to en­list over 800 new prison of­fi­cers,” Ma­haraj said.

He said the re­cruits would be “young peo­ple com­ing with tal­ent” who would be prop­er­ly trained as Gov­ern­ment moves to pro­vide more re­sources to the prison ser­vice and po­lice.

“We are not leav­ing the prison ser­vice to floun­der. We’re not leav­ing the po­lice ser­vice to floun­der. We are sup­port­ing them and giv­ing them re­sources,” he said.

Ma­haraj al­so sought to counter con­cerns raised about the im­pact the pro­posed pa­role sys­tem could have on the ju­di­cia­ry and wider jus­tice sys­tem.

He told the House that the Gov­ern­ment con­sult­ed sev­er­al stake­hold­ers be­fore ex­pand­ing the leg­is­la­tion from its orig­i­nal 27 claus­es, in­clud­ing the Ju­di­cia­ry, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, Pub­lic De­fend­ers De­part­ment, Min­istry of Jus­tice, As­sem­bly of South­ern Lawyers and To­ba­go Law As­so­ci­a­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Ma­haraj, the Ju­di­cia­ry sub­mit­ted a “very long and de­tailed” re­sponse sup­port­ing the leg­is­la­tion.

He said the Ju­di­cia­ry agreed that re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion should re­main cen­tral to mod­ern pe­nal re­form ef­forts and sup­port­ed pa­role re­form ini­tia­tives aimed at al­low­ing of­fend­ers op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion while un­der su­per­vi­sion.

Ma­haraj said the Ju­di­cia­ry al­so stressed the im­por­tance of re­duc­ing re­liance on in­car­cer­a­tion and pro­mot­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion across the jus­tice sys­tem, in­clud­ing prison ser­vices, pro­ba­tion, pa­role su­per­vi­sion, men­tal health sup­port and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices.

“We en­gaged every­one,” he said.

The min­is­ter al­so re­ject­ed calls from the Op­po­si­tion for the bill to be sent to a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee, ar­gu­ing that ex­ten­sive con­sul­ta­tion had al­ready tak­en place.

De­bate on the Pa­role Bill 2026 con­tin­ued in the Low­er House this af­ter­noon.