Camille Clarke

Pres­i­dent of the Pris­ons Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion Ceron Richards says the lat­est in tech­nol­o­gy is need­ed to fight crime.He al­so agreed with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's state­ment at the UNC's Mon­day Night Fo­rum in Gas­par­il­lo that crim­i­nals were us­ing il­le­gal cell­phones in the na­tion's pris­ons to co-or­di­nate mur­ders and oth­er crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.The Prime Min­is­ter said the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil had moved to im­ple­ment mo­bile phone sig­nal jam­mers at the pris­ons.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Richards said: "That has long been seen as a prob­lem and has been in the pub­lic do­main for years, where there is a link in the prison sys­tem and out­side."All the more rea­son why we sup­port the ini­tia­tive and hope she (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) lis­tens to the cries of pris­ons of­fi­cers and in­mates so the Gov­ern­ment mea­sures are nec­es­sary to bring about a prop­er­ly func­tion­ing pris­ons ser­vice that can ef­fec­tive­ly treat with the pro­tec­tion of the so­ci­ety from crime."

Richards said stronger se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures with the lat­est in new tech­nol­o­gy were need­ed at the pris­ons.He said while the as­so­ci­a­tion was grate­ful for the cell­phone jam­mers, the pris­ons need­ed re­fur­bish­ment."We agree with her. We are elat­ed. We called for this for the past few years be­cause there is a pro­lif­er­a­tion of cell­phones in the T&T prison sys­tem that is caus­ing a neg­a­tive on the in­ter­nal en­vi­ron­ment and ex­ter­nal en­vi­ron­ment as it re­lates to crime," he added.