Sev­er­al star­tling facts were re­vealed in Mon­day's En­ter­prise desk re­port on the lo­cal pris­ons sys­tem. At least six pris­ons of­fi­cers have cho­sen to live in dor­mi­to­ries in prison rather than risk their lives leav­ing the walls of the fa­cil­i­ty.

Mar­riages are un­der pres­sure as wives and chil­dren are re­port­ed to be leav­ing their hus­bands or mi­grat­ing in fear. Be­tween 2001 and 2016, fif­teen pris­ons of­fi­cers have been mur­dered, with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ac­knowl­edg­ing that the men died "as a con­se­quence of of­fi­cial du­ties." Salaries paid to pris­ons of­fi­cers, which range be­tween $6,000 and $13,000 per month are con­sid­ered in­ad­e­quate for the risks in­volved in the job.

Safe­ty mea­sures de­signed to im­prove of­fi­cer com­fort on the job, in­clud­ing scan­ning equip­ment and safe­ty vests are be­ing ei­ther spot­ti­ly im­ple­ment­ed or not func­tion­ing at all. All this in the face of known prob­lems with the fa­cil­i­ties them­selves, which are con­sid­er­able and well known.

In 1980, for­mer An­gli­can Bish­op Rt Rev Clive Ab­du­lah vis­it­ed pris­ons as the head of a com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the mod­erni­sa­tion of the coun­try's pe­nal sys­tem.

What he found was deeply dis­turb­ing and even 33 years lat­er, in an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, re­mem­bered the Re­mand Yard as "close to hell."

That re­port was ig­nored. Noth­ing was done to re­form a pris­ons sys­tem that was known to be fo­cused on pun­ish­ment, not re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion. The 2013 Ryan Re­port filed by Dr Sel­wyn Ryan would al­so be shelved, along with the an­nu­al re­ports on the con­di­tions in lo­cal pris­ons ob­served, com­piled and re­port­ed by In­spec­tor of Pris­ons Daniel Khan.

For 36 years, it has been clear, both through ob­ser­va­tion as well as doc­u­ment­ed fact, that the pris­ons of Trinidad and To­ba­go have round­ly ig­nored mod­ern prac­tices in in­car­cer­a­tion, turned a de­ter­mined­ly blind eye to the hu­man be­ings held in these filthy, dank spaces and failed to con­sid­er the dif­fer­ence that a se­ri­ous pro­gramme of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion might bring.

Some small steps have been tak­en in chang­ing this sta­tus quo. A pi­lot drug re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion court has been in­tro­duced by the Ju­di­cia­ry, but re­mains very much in its test­ing phas­es. In­cre­men­tal moves have al­so been made in im­prov­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ties for chil­dren im­pris­oned at youth fa­cil­i­ties.

The Ju­di­cia­ry's Fam­i­ly Court has blos­somed in­to a com­pas­sion­ate and con­cerned fo­rum for dis­cus­sion and judge­ment in the very se­ri­ous mat­ter of de­cid­ing on the care of chil­dren. Ac­cord­ing to Daniel Khan, 98 per cent of all in­mates are re­leased in­to so­ci­ety, but the pris­ons sys­tem for adults, par­tic­u­lar­ly adult males, re­mains the one place where it's pos­si­ble to en­ter on a mi­nor charge and leave ready to com­mit ma­jor crimes. Where train­ing, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and ed­u­ca­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties for so­cial rein­te­gra­tion have been ab­sent; an­ti-so­cial al­ter­na­tives have re­placed them.

Arch­bish­op Joseph Har­ris is lead­ing a pe­ti­tion to re­lease re­mand pris­on­ers, charged with an of­fence and await­ing tri­al, who have been in prison for a du­ra­tion longer than the sen­tence for their al­leged crime. The Law As­so­ci­a­tion has since joined the call for Pres­i­dent Car­mona to con­sid­er the par­dons.

The Arch­bish­op has framed the pe­ti­tion in the con­text of Pope Fran­cis' Ju­bilee Year of Mer­cy, but the sug­ges­tion al­so car­ries the weight of com­mon sense. That this hasn't been on the agen­da be­fore, sig­nals the wor­ry­ing con­cern that the ra­tio­nale of the prison sys­tem re­mains pun­ish­ment and ill-con­sid­ered puni­tive mea­sures at that. A fun­da­men­tal re­think­ing of the role of the prison sys­tem is long over­due and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter should be mak­ing ap­pro­pri­ate plans in sup­port of the mea­sures pro­posed and filed with his min­istry.