Geisha Kow­lessar

It's a place where an­gels may fear to tread. Ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty, HIV/Aids, vi­cious fights among ri­val gangs, nar­co-ped­dling, im­pro­vised weapons, over­crowd­ing and even flood­ing. It's a pic­ture of melan­choly and de­spair at the na­tion's pris­ons. But amidst the de­spair and des­o­la­tion there is hope, as­serts new­ly-ap­point­ed Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Mar­tin Mar­tinez. Emerg­ing from hum­ble be­gin­nings, Mar­tinez was born in Guaico Tamana and spent his for­mi­da­ble years in La Brea. On Oc­to­ber 7, 2011, Mar­tinez, who has faith­ful­ly served the Pris­ons Ser­vice for 35 years, was hand­ed over the man­tle by for­mer pris­ons com­mis­sion­er John Rougi­er.

His strict de­meanour earned him the nick­names "Cae­sar" and "Step­ping Ra­zor." While Mar­tinez's ap­point­ment may be viewed as a "bap­tism of fire" of sorts-tak­ing con­trol of the pris­ons dur­ing the heart of the state of emer­gency-he dis­agrees. "I act­ed com­mis­sion­er of pris­ons for six months be­tween 2009 and 2010...it's a role that is not scary to me," he said. "I've been trained, ex­posed and well equipped in terms of my ex­po­sure and ex­pe­ri­ence to han­dle the port­fo­lio. With­in the past years, there have been a num­ber of crises and I have been at the fore­front of those crises...There's noth­ing I can't han­dle."

Dig­ni­ty to the undig­ni­fied

Peo­ple de­prived of their free­dom should not ex­ist in undig­ni­fied cir­cum­stances. And in an era where de­ten­tion fa­cil­i­ties are placed un­der the mi­cro­scope of watch­dog bod­ies like Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al, Mar­tinez's vi­sion is to pro­vide dig­ni­ty to the undig­ni­fied. Say­ing he has worked in every unit of the Pris­ons Ser­vice, Mar­tinez said: "For the time that I have been here there hasn't been a quan­tum leap in con­di­tions as far as ac­com­mo­da­tion is con­cerned. "That is a chal­lenge...for me to im­prove the lot of in­mates in sig­nif­i­cant ways." He cit­ed Car­rera and the Port-of-Spain pris­ons where, he said, change was most need­ed, while there had been min­i­mal im­prove­ment at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison at Arou­ca since it still re­mained a fair­ly-new fa­cil­i­ty.

And the 4,300 in­mates who com­prise the prison pop­u­la­tion have been de­scribed by the prison chief as "good pris­on­ers." "Trinidad pris­on­ers are good pris­on­ers," Mar­tinez in­sist­ed. "There are the hard-core crim­i­nals who are ir­re­spon­si­ble and need a lot of cor­rec­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion in terms of their morals but by and large we have good pris­on­ers." For good gov­er­nance to pre­vail there must be sta­bil­i­ty in the coun­try and by ex­ten­sion the Pris­ons Ser­vice which Mar­tinez is hop­ing to achieve dur­ing his next two years in of­fice. "If we hadn't good pris­on­ers, the coun­try would be more un­sta­ble, more volatile," he said.

"My con­tri­bu­tion to good gov­er­nance and the coun­try is to make the Prison Ser­vice a sta­ble en­vi­ron­ment.

"The di­choto­my of im­pris­on­ment is that you de­prive peo­ple of their free­dom to train them to free them." And high on his agen­da is to re­place "tub­bing" or "pig-tail buck­ets" with "stain­less steel toi­lets" at the Port-of-Spain prison. De­scrib­ing the fa­cil­i­ty as "old," Mar­tinez said ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures to be im­ple­ment­ed in­clud­ed bag­gage scan­ners. "But there is on­ly so much you could do...Port-of-Spain prison doesn't have the room for ex­pan­sion. "I per­son­al­ly feel that Port-of-Spain could cease to ex­ist as a prison once we get prop­er and mod­ern fa­cil­i­ties to ac­com­mo­date the pop­u­la­tion which is 600 in­mates," Mar­tinez said. "That fa­cil­i­ty is over­crowd­ed as it was built for a ca­pac­i­ty of 250 pris­on­ers.

How­ev­er, Mar­tinez said the prison was not "ridicu­lous­ly over­crowd­ed," adding that the same fa­cil­i­ty once housed 1,400 in­mates. "But it pos­es a prob­lem be­cause it is over­crowd­ed....that con­di­tion shouldn't be for hu­man be­ings," he added. An­oth­er key fac­tor crit­i­cal to up­lift­ing prison life was pro­vid­ing a spir­i­tu­al foun­da­tion to in­mates via dif­fer­ent re­li­gious bod­ies. "Hope is the last thing that dies in a man...If you don't give peo­ple hope, they are dan­ger­ous to be around," Mar­tinez said.

12 per cent pop­u­la­tion in­crease since SoE

Since the state of emer­gency was im­ple­ment­ed on Au­gust 21, there has been an in­crease in the prison pop­u­la­tion of be­tween 12 and 14 per cent, Mar­tinez says. "Be­fore the state of emer­gency, the pop­u­la­tion in­creased from Jan­u­ary to Au­gust by nine per cent, and be­tween Au­gust and the state of emer­gency and there­after, the pop­u­la­tion in­crease to 14 per cent," Mar­tinez ex­plained. But amid claims from the gen­er­al pub­lic that over-crowd­ed con­di­tions could pose a threat, Mar­tinez as­sured this was far from the truth.

"My of­fi­cers are on the ground and ful­ly trained to deal with the sit­u­a­tion but it is not a hap­py sit­u­a­tion for us," he said.

"We ex­pect that the con­di­tions would im­prove as we grad­u­al­ly oc­cu­py the East­ern Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and Cor­rec­tion­al Cen­tre in San­ta Rosa." The fig­ure of pris­ons of­fi­cers is less that half of the pop­u­la­tion of in­mates. The ra­tio, how­ev­er, suf­fices. "The ra­tio is a work­ing ra­tio which means that the pris­on­er pop­u­la­tion is a stand­ing pop­u­la­tion the pris­ons of­fi­cer pop­u­la­tion is a ro­tat­ing pop­u­la­tion in three batch­es and it is re­al­ly 800 of­fi­cers on the ground at any one time to 4,200 in­mates," Mar­tinez ex­plained.

He said the pris­ons of­fi­cer pop­u­la­tion would be fur­ther re­duced when less than ten per cent pro­ceed­ed on va­ca­tion and two per cent tak­ing emer­gency leave.

"That im­me­di­ate­ly re­duces it to about 700 and then you have to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion train­ing, sick leave and ex­tend­ed sick leave," he said. "So by and large, you would get per­haps 500 of­fi­cers to the 4,300 in­mates at one time, and this is the con­cern that amass­es that the gen­er­al pub­lic doesn't know." He said the Pris­ons Ser­vice was giv­en a man­date to se­lect an ad­di­tion­al 1,300 of­fi­cers. The ba­sic qual­i­fi­ca­tion to en­ter the Pris­ons Ser­vice is the min­i­mum of three O-Lev­el pass­es. The last re­cruit­ment took place in 2009 and 2,000 males ap­plied. How­ev­er, that fig­ure dra­mat­i­cal­ly whit­tled as some 600 passed the ex­am­i­na­tion and it was fur­ther re­duced af­ter many failed drug test­ing and psy­cho­me­t­ric test­ing. "We took in 208 of­fi­cers for train­ing but we have about 177 in the train­ing col­lege and a fur­ther two might go home be­cause we found traces nar­cotics in their urine sam­ples," Mar­tinez said.

Less than five per cent 'rogue' of­fi­cers

Rogue pris­ons of­fi­cers com­prise less than five per cent of the ser­vice's law en­force­ment body. The rest, de­clared Mar­tinez, were "ded­i­cat­ed, hard-work­ing, dis­ci­plined of­fi­cers." Say­ing he wouldn't bury his head in the sand, Mar­tinez added: "Pris­ons of­fi­cers by and large are not rogue of­fi­cers...There are a few of­fi­cers who are re­al­ly un­der­min­ing and dis­ap­point­ing the pris­ons ad­min­is­tra­tion by en­gag­ing in those il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties. "But my of­fi­cers are good of­fi­cers, 2,250 are good of­fi­cers," he said. "We find the mar­i­jua­na and cell­phones-the vig­i­lance and su­per­vi­sion are above par." Re­gard­ing claims of beat­ings met­ed out to in­mates at the hands of pris­ons of­fi­cers, Mar­tinez de­scribed prison en­vi­ron­ment as "volatile and un­pre­dictable."

"It's a place where some­times I feel an­gels fear to tread," he said. "It's a place where bad men dwell and good men have to su­per­vise. "There will be al­ter­ca­tions...We have pris­on­er and pris­on­er vi­o­lence, pris­on­er and of­fi­cer vi­o­lence and sad­ly we have of­fi­cer and pris­on­er vi­o­lence. "I won't tol­er­ate that but this is not a kinder­garten and pris­on­ers do at­tack of­fi­cers and they would de­fend them­selves." Asked if he be­lieved in the death penal­ty, the pris­ons chief said if the Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to out­law hang­ings he would be "ex­treme­ly hap­py." But he quick­ly added: "If the Gov­ern­ment of the day re­sumes hang­ing, I would im­me­di­ate­ly feel a ec­sta­cy of or­gas­mic pro­por­tion."

Pris­ons of­fi­cers are be­lieved to be the mas­ter­minds be­hind the in­car­cer­a­tion of in­mates. This, Mar­tinez said, was of­ten in­ter­nalised by pris­on­ers who would then vent their anger on un­sus­pect­ing of­fi­cers. "They don't be­lieve that oth­er agents in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem are re­spon­si­ble for them be­ing in prison," he said. "We have a man­date to keep pris­on­ers be­hind bars at all costs even if it means our very lives. "Who de­priv­ing you of your free­dom and stop­ping your mar­i­jua­na and cell­phone from com­ing in?

The prison of­fi­cer, so tar­get them, call hits on them...Of­fi­cers are lit­er­al­ly sit­ting ducks."

Mar­tinez said "per­ceived or re­al," in­mates had "re­al griev­ances" and of­ten turned to of­fi­cers to act out their hate. "The stricter the prison en­vi­ron­ment and the more you try to con­trol, the more you up­set cer­tain un­der­world el­e­ments and your life be­comes a risk," he said. "No­body can pay you for work­ing in a prison. "The job of a prison of­fi­cer is a labour of love...The pet­ty change as a salary can­not com­pen­sate."

Clan­des­tine ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty

Be­hind the im­pos­ing iron gates of the na­tion's pris­ons, ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty ex­ists, but it is covert. "There is ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty in the pris­ons like there is ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty in the me­dia, in the Po­lice Ser­vice and in every facet of life," Mar­tinez said. "It ex­ists and it's cause for con­cern but we must not be­have where the prison en­vi­ron­ment is an open sepul­chre where be­hind every door some­body is rid­ing a horse." He said in some cas­es ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty is dis­cov­ered when a quar­rel or fight erupts. "Ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty in the prison is not about love and af­fec­tion...It is about con­trol and dom­i­nance," Mar­tinez said.

"And if you come in and you want pro­tec­tion or you al­ways hun­gry or greedy you will be preyed up­on and the prison ad­min­is­tra­tion might not be the wis­er for it un­less some­one says some­thing or some­one gets hurt." He ve­he­ment­ly de­nied claims that pris­ons au­thor­i­ty en­cour­aged ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty. "This thing about of­fi­cers throw­ing two men in a cell is ab­solute rub­bish," he said. "I have worked in the trench­es of the prison like no oth­er com­mis­sion­er and I have nev­er seen a ho­mo­sex­u­al act but I know it's go­ing on." Say­ing the HIV/Aids rate was "not wor­ry­ing" in the pris­ons, Mar­tinez said it's a dis­ease brought from the wider so­ci­ety in­to the var­i­ous fa­cil­i­ties. He iden­ti­fied a host of oth­er ail­ments which ex­ist in the pris­ons en­vi­ron­ment in­clud­ing tu­ber­cu­lo­sis, sca­bies and chick­en pox. "Every­thing you could think about it ex­ists in the prison en­vi­ron­ment

Chal­lenges fac­ing T&T's pris­ons

• Safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty.

• Spe­cial needs groups i.e. women, ju­ve­niles, aged, in­firm long sen­tenced and con­demned in­mates.

• Over­crowd­ing/clas­si­fi­ca­tion.

•Traf­fick­ing; cell­phones, co­caine, mar­i­jua­na.

• Gangs; In­ter and In­tra Gang War­fare and gang man­age­ment.

• Prison re­form and trans­for­ma­tion.

• Phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment and main­te­nance.