Camille Clarke

Prison of­fi­cers are con­cerned about se­vere over­crowd­ing at the na­tion's pris­ons re­sult­ing from the large num­ber of peo­ple ar­rest­ed over the last few days dur­ing the state of emer­gency. A mem­ber of the Pris­ons Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion said in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day that the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion threat­ened to add an al­ready chron­ic over­crowd­ing prob­lem. At present, he said, there are 11 in­mates to a cell at the Gold­en Grove Prison in Arou­ca. "I strong­ly be­lieve we can­not house the amount of peo­ple they are bring­ing in­to the prison...It is im­pos­si­ble," the spokesman said. "They should lo­cate a build­ing to use as a de­ten­tion cen­tre in­stead of bring­ing them to the pris­ons," he sug­gest­ed.

The spokesman said a sim­i­lar prob­lem oc­curred ear­li­er this year when va­grants were be­ing tak­en off the streets, "and we had no fa­cil­i­ties to deal with them." The prison spokesman al­so warned that there could be ad­di­tion­al prob­lems if ri­val gang mem­bers were placed in close prox­im­i­ty. "It will be­come volatile and vi­o­lent," he said. "If they war­ring against each oth­er out­side, it wouldn't stop in here, or they could gang up and come against the of­fi­cers." Ac­cord­ing to the prison of­fi­cer, a small area at Gold­en Grove known as Guan­tanamo is used to house gang mem­bers. "The area is not big and we are sup­posed to have one in­mate per cell...Now we can't do that, which caus­es over­crowd­ing with the new guys com­ing in," he said.

"These peo­ple are de­tainees and the State must have de­ten­tion cen­tre for them." "The re­mand and con­vict sec­tions are filled to ca­pac­i­ty in Port-of-Spain and it will be like in the ear­ly 1900s. "We al­ready have 11 peo­ple in a cell in Port-of-Spain." A to­tal of 462 peo­ple have been de­tained for var­i­ous of­fences since the state of emer­gency took ef­fect last Sun­day, ac­cord­ing to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs. De­tainees in­clude homi­cide sus­pects, gang mem­bers, as well as peo­ple held for breach­ing the cur­few and oth­er of­fences. On Thurs­day, 32 re­put­ed gang mem­bers were de­nied bail when they ap­peared be­fore a Port-of-Spain mag­is­trate.