Justice Minister warns that overcrowded prisons are ‘sitting time bomb’

Gail Alexan­der and

Shane Su­perville

Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj has warned that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pris­ons are “a sit­ting time bomb” as the Pro­ba­tion of Of­fend­ers Amend­ment Bill was passed unan­i­mous­ly in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, in­tro­duc­ing a hy­brid sys­tem of jail time and pro­ba­tion amid se­vere over­crowd­ing.

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) MP Kei­th Scot­land said the Op­po­si­tion would sup­port the bill but pro­posed amend­ments, ar­gu­ing that it af­fects peo­ple’s lib­er­ty.

Scot­land al­so re­ject­ed Jus­tice Min­is­ter Ma­haraj’s claim that the pre­vi­ous PNM gov­ern­ment did noth­ing on pro­ba­tion sys­tems, out­lin­ing the par­ty’s var­i­ous ini­tia­tives in­stead.

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj said one of the key rea­sons for the leg­is­la­tion was the prison pop­u­la­tion of 3,456 in­mates, stat­ing it is “far past the ca­pac­i­ty our prison sys­tem is sup­posed to have,” adding, “We’re sit­ting on a time bomb.”

Mean­while, con­cerns over the wider prison sys­tem were al­so raised by the pres­i­dent of the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (POA), Ger­ard Gor­don, who warned that con­di­tions in­side the na­tion’s pris­ons con­tin­ue to de­te­ri­o­rate due to se­vere short­ages of equip­ment and re­sources.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Gor­don said prison of­fi­cers con­tin­ued to con­tend with a dif­fi­cult work­ing en­vi­ron­ment as ba­sic tools and re­sources re­main un­avail­able for many of­fi­cers.

When asked if there has been any re­lief for of­fi­cers in re­cent times, Gor­don said the prob­lems of past ad­min­is­tra­tions have con­tin­ued.

“The prison ser­vice has col­lapsed; the on­ly thing hold­ing the prison ser­vice to­geth­er with any sem­blance of or­der is the fact that prison of­fi­cers con­tin­ue to come to work, but when you look at the num­ber of is­sues we face... sim­ple things, no uni­form, no tools, equip­ment fail­ing, gates mal­func­tion­ing, pan­els mal­func­tion­ing, no HVAC or air con­di­tion­ing in places that have no ven­ti­la­tion, a lack of wa­ter at a num­ber of fa­cil­i­ties, a lack of ve­hi­cles... the list goes on and on.

“I’m not speak­ing to any par­tic­u­lar per­son, but those peo­ple who now have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to over­see and pro­vide the re­sources to the prison ser­vice, I don’t think they have an un­der­stand­ing of what these needs are... not lux­u­ry items, and cer­tain­ly we have not been see­ing that kind of sup­port from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment for quite some time.”

When asked if the re­lo­ca­tion of high-pro­file pris­on­ers, which in­cludes sev­er­al re­put­ed gang lead­ers, from the pris­ons to Teteron Bar­racks, has led to bet­ter se­cu­ri­ty at the pris­ons, Gor­don said the dan­gers per­sist­ed.

“I won’t say more or less as it re­lates to those spe­cif­ic in­di­vid­u­als, what I would say is we con­tin­ue to grap­ple with the chal­lenges of hav­ing of­fi­cers op­er­ate in a safe and se­cure work­ing en­vi­ron­ment and then man­ag­ing their safe­ty when they leave the prison at the end of du­ty.

“There is no com­mu­ni­ca­tion to us that enough has been done or enough is be­ing done to mit­i­gate how a prison of­fi­cer feels... There is no prison of­fi­cer you will speak to will tell you they feel com­plete­ly safe.”

Gor­don ar­gued that ba­sic re­sources were need­ed for of­fi­cers to dis­charge their du­ties, not­ing that while these were long-stand­ing is­sues, there was a need for them to be ad­dressed soon­er rather than lat­er.