Melis­sa Doughty

Jus­tice Min­is­ter Christlyn Moore sees no ob­sta­cles to the min­istry's at­tempts to curb cell­phone use in pris­ons. She made the com­ment at a press con­fer­ence on Fri­day af­ter­noon at the min­istry's of­fice at Tow­er C, In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain. Al­so at the brief­ing was Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Mar­tin Mar­tinez.Moore said the meet­ing sought "to af­firm the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the prison and the Min­istry of Jus­tice."

A se­ries of meet­ings, she said, has been held with ex­ec­u­tive of the Pris­ons Ser­vice to dis­cuss is­sues re­lat­ing to prison se­cu­ri­ty and to de­vise a plan "to which we are all on the same page."She said last Mon­day Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­closed an as­pect of the se­cu­ri­ty plan, the jam­mers and grab­bers, at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Mon­day Night Fo­rum in Gas­par­il­lo. She de­fined it as one of the sev­er­al com­po­nents that the Gov­ern­ment has been work­ing to­ward ad­vanc­ing.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Gov­ern­ment would im­ple­ment mea­sures to curb cell­phone use in prison. Jam­mers and grab­bers were iden­ti­fied as the in­stru­ments the Gov­ern­ment planned to im­ple­ment to curb the cel­lu­lar use.Moore said the over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty of pris­ons of­fi­cers were pro­fes­sion­als de­spite claims of "rogue el­e­ments" in the ser­vice.

"In fact I have ut­ter con­fi­dence in the pro­fes­sion­al­ism in the over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty of our prison of­fi­cers. The over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty of prison of­fi­cers are pro­fes­sion­al and law-abid­ing. They have a vest­ed in­ter­est in mak­ing sure that their work en­vi­ron­ment is safe and se­cure and the pro­lif­er­a­tion of cell­phones in pris­ons is a dan­ger to a safe work­ing en­vi­ron­ment for prison of­fi­cers. So I have no hes­i­ta­tion at all in say­ing that I know the min­istry has the sup­port of the prison of­fi­cers," she said.

Mem­bers of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) such as Faris Al-Rawi ques­tioned Per­sad-Bisses­sar's dis­clo­sure of the use of jam­mers and grab­bers to fight against the use of cell phones in prison.But Mar­tinez said the biggest chal­lenge faced by the Pris­ons Ser­vice is the use of cell­phones in prison.

Mar­tinez said in dis­cus­sions with one of the ser­vice providers iden­ti­fied to pro­vide the tech­nol­o­gy, he was as­sured that, "the sur­round­ing ar­eas would not be af­fect­ed" by the use of the cell­phone dis­rupt­ing tech­nol­o­gy.He said the jam­mers are to be in­stalled at the Re­mand Prison, Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison and the Port-of-Spain State Prison. The jam­mers, he said, would be strate­gi­cal­ly placed and man­aged by a spe­cial team of trained of­fi­cers.

Mar­tinez was un­able to give a time­line for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy.When ques­tioned on "rogue el­e­ments" with­in the prison ser­vice, Mar­tinez said, "We have a pris­ons of­fi­cer pop­u­la­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4,000. I know that less than five per cent of the prison of­fi­cer pop­u­la­tion can be cat­e­gorised as crooked. We have been work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly with oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cies to deal with the whole is­sue of rogue of­fi­cers in our ju­ris­dic­tion."

Mar­tinez said he has tak­en a ze­ro tol­er­ance stance on the mat­ter. He added that the ser­vice was able to in­ter­cept a num­ber of cell­phones and cig­a­rettes com­ing in­to the prison not from prison of­fi­cers but from "ve­hi­cles of an­oth­er ser­vice sup­pli­er" which he said was dealt with in a par­tic­u­lar way.