Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

For­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sub­has Pan­day be­lieves a well-paid in­de­pen­dent elite team should be hired by the Gov­ern­ment to deal with the cell­phone rack­et in prison as a method of crime re­duc­tion.Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at his San Fer­nan­do of­fice yes­ter­day, Pan­day laud­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for at­tempt­ing to deal with the il­le­gal trade.He sug­gest­ed she should li­aise with the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion to stop the un­der­ground rack­et.

Say­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar would face many hur­dles be­cause some prison of­fi­cials were al­leged­ly part of the il­le­gal ring, Pan­day said invit­ing pris­ons of­fi­cers to mon­i­tor cell­phone jam­mers would be like "leav­ing a cat to watch but­ter."I am heart­ened that the Prime Min­is­ter, as head of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty (the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil), has em­barked on firm ac­tion but it is a dif­fi­cult task deal­ing with the jail cul­ture and the jail econ­o­my," Pan­day said.He added that it was com­mon for drugs to be sold in prison.

"Some pris­on­ers 'vault' the phones (in their rec­tums) and there is trad­ing in the pris­ons un­der the watch of the pris­ons of­fi­cers," Pan­day said.He said un­der his tenure he at­tempt­ed to deal with the is­sue but "every ex­cuse in the world was giv­en by the ad­min­is­tra­tors about why it would not work."Pan­day said the easy en­try of cell­phones and oth­er il­le­gal ma­te­r­i­al in jail would not stop if mon­i­tor­ing the scan­ners and cell­phone jam­mers re­mained in the hands of the prison ad­min­is­tra­tors.

He said dur­ing his tenure he faced op­po­si­tion from the prison au­thor­i­ties when he tried to deal with the prob­lem. "As a start­ing point we in­stalled scan­ners to pre­vent cell­phones from en­ter­ing but when I told them to in­stall cell jam­mers they said it could not be done be­cause it would af­fect the res­i­dents in the vicin­i­ty of the jail," Pan­day added.

He said the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit had a mo­bile cell jam­mer which was used for a short while but the prison au­thor­i­ties stopped us­ing it be­cause they said it was bet­ter to let the calls go through so they could mon­i­tor and deal with crime from the source but this nev­er hap­pened, he said.

Pan­day rec­om­mend­ed that pris­ons of­fi­cers be giv­en a poly­graph test every six months. He said sur­veil­lance cam­eras, scan­ners and cell­phone jam­mers should be set up and there should be reg­u­lar li­ai­son with the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion which want­ed to as­sist in crack­ing down on il­le­gal use of cell­phones in prison.He al­so rec­om­mend­ed that prison of­fi­cers' dor­mi­to­ries be built out­side the prison walls.

Pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion Ceron Richards has laud­ed the cell­phone-jam­ming ini­tia­tive.He said the as­so­ci­a­tion had been lob­by­ing for im­proved tech­no­log­i­cal sys­tems at the pris­ons, in­clud­ing closed-cir­cuit cam­eras, body scan­ners and met­al de­tec­tors for sev­er­al years.He al­so rec­om­mend­ed that a com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem should be in­stalled to al­low in­mates to com­mu­ni­cate with their fam­i­lies, friends and lawyers.

Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Mar­tin Mar­tinez was not avail­able for com­ment as calls to his cell­phone went unan­swered.