Richard Lord

The Car­rera Is­land Prison is to be closed down this year, Jus­tice Min­is­ter Christlyn Moore said dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair. She said the 300 in­mates would be trans­ferred to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, Gold­en Grove, Arou­ca. Moore said plans were al­so in train to close down the prison on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain, as soon as pos­si­ble.

She said she was dis­turbed by what she saw there dur­ing a re­cent vis­it.With­in three to four months, she said, she hoped to take a note to Cab­i­net on al­so clos­ing down the Port-of-Spain prison.Moore added:"The Min­istry of Jus­tice is ac­tive­ly en­gaged in a part­ner­ship with the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons and oth­er stake­hold­ers with re­gard to clos­ing that fa­cil­i­ty as well. "That mat­ter is the sub­ject of a cur­rent in­ves­ti­ga­tion. It is not be­fore the Cab­i­net but it is a goal that we are ac­tive­ly work­ing on."

The min­is­ter told re­porters all she could say was that she saw the city prison and agreed that "the prison ought not to con­tin­ue and we are mak­ing every ef­fort to find a way to end the era."She said while there were some se­ri­ous chal­lenges to the move to close it down the Gov­ern­ment was mak­ing a "valiant at­tempt. It has to be done."Moore said the ex­ist­ing arrange­ment at Car­rera posed chal­lenges for vis­i­tors and de­liv­er­ing wa­ter and goods to the is­land prison.

She added: "The plant is no longer suit­able for the pur­pose so Cab­i­net has agreed to close the fa­cil­i­ty by the end of the year and to re­house the in­mates at the max­i­mum se­cu­ri­ty prison."

She said the Car­rera prison was es­tab­lished in 1937 to house about 185 in­mates and its iso­la­tion from the main­land made its up­grade im­prac­ti­cal.Moore said the Car­rera prison would re­main un­der the con­trol of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter for a use yet to be de­ter­mined but if it was left un­at­tend­ed it could be used for "un­savoury pur­pos­es."

Car­rera to be closed down

She said the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison had suf­fi­cient room to house the in­mates and a se­cu­ri­ty up­grade was tak­ing place there.She was un­able to say how much the mea­sure would cost. Moore is ex­pect­ed to tour the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in two weeks. In re­sponse to an­oth­er ques­tion, Moore said there were no plans to pri­va­tise the Pris­ons Ser­vice. She al­so com­ment­ed on an an­nounce­ment by sacked jus­tice min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney that 50 pris­on­ers were to be par­doned by the Pres­i­dent as a 50th an­niver­sary gift to the na­tion dur­ing the Gold­en Ju­bilee last Au­gust.

Moore said that pro­pos­al was a pre­sump­tu­ous one on Vol­ney's part and he "had very high hopes and lofty dreams. Such a state­ment pre­sumed cer­tain things which may not have proven to be true."Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Ja­mal Mo­hammed said the Gov­ern­ment was ex­pect­ed to an­nounce more changes to the con­tro­ver­sial De­fence Amend­ment Bill when de­bate on it re­sumed in Par­lia­ment this af­ter­noon.

He said the Gov­ern­ment had been lis­ten­ing to the con­cerns of the pop­u­la­tion but the ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens sup­port­ed the bill to give sol­diers po­lice pow­ers of ar­rest.He said Cab­i­net did not dis­cuss re­ports of a min­is­ter's son be­ing un­der house ar­rest in the Unit­ed States.