There were, in 2012, 21 prisoners awaiting execution in local prisons. There hasn't been an execution in this country since 1999, but the laws regarding hanging remain on the books as the ultimate sentence for murder.
It's doubtful any of these prisoners can be executed having spent more than a decade behind bars awaiting death even if the government could muster the gumption and inevitable firestorm of international condemnation to resume the practice.
In his address at the start of the new law term, Chief Justice Ivor Archie told his esteemed audience that there are more than five hundred defendants awaiting trial for murder.
On Thursday, President Anthony Carmona announced the formation of a new Psychiatric Health Tribunal designed to address an appalling situation which finds nine men, found guilty of murder and found insane remaining locked up at the St Ann's Psychiatric Hospital at the President's pleasure.
President Carmona clearly took no pleasure in this situation and hopes that the nine-member tribunal will be able to evaluate cases of these men and decide on their fate, something that hasn't been done for three decades. People declared insane today cannot be put on trial, but it's hard to accept that thirty years' worth of improvement in the treatment of mental imbalances would have had no impact on the nine men who have, effectively, spent their lives in a prison of a very different sort.
The initiative was driven for two of those decades by psychiatrist Dr Iqbal Ghany who called for a qualified tribunal to be convened to evaluate these cases.
These two revelations are the tip of a terrible iceberg of neglect and abandonment in the prison system, which remains robustly focused on incarceration of the guilty while paying lip service, at best, to concepts of remediation, rehabilitation and restorative justice.
Two of this nation's leaders, the holders of the critical offices of the Presidency and the Judiciary, have signalled that there is a critical need to review, overhaul and revamp the prisons system and process in T&T.
Both have demonstrated a willingness within their limited ambit to make changes to the system.
President Carmona's mental health tribunal has an analogue in the Chief Justice's drug court pilot project, which is designed to both reduce the number of people entering the prison system for minor offences and to require drug offenders to undergo rehabilitation.
There is a massive cost associated with our overwhelmed penal system, both in terms of lost social opportunity for rehabilitation and in the literal cost of keeping prisoners under lock and key, even under conditions that are generally acknowledged to be appalling.
Taxpayers underwrite this cost both with treasury money and with every act of crime undertaken by a recidivist graduate of the prison system.
It is no secret that many minor criminals leave our prisons better educated about crime and ready for an upscaling of their previous activities.
The people of T&T deserve a better return on this considerable investment, while the prisoners who are sandwiched into its overcrowded cells deserve a better opportunity to remake their lives.
Until the prison system is seen as an opportunity to rebuild lives and offer a fresh reboot of careers that have gone astray, our penal system will remain a punishment for those who are consigned to it and those who must face ex-convicts who have learned the wrong lessons from their time behind bars.