Sean Nero

Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Ster­ling Stew­art has made it clear that both he and his of­fi­cers, and not pris­on­ers, are in charge of the T&T Pris­ons Ser­vice.Speak­ing at the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the new Vi­sion On Mis­sion board and awards cer­e­mo­ny held at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, on Tues­day, Stew­art said he in­tend­ed to keep or­der in the sys­tem and would not bow to pres­sure from with­in.

There have been dis­tur­bances at both the Gold­en Grove re­mand prison and Women's Prison, in Arou­ca, over the past weeks in which both pris­ons of­fi­cers and in­mates were in­jured.

De­liv­er­ing a no-non­sense speech be­fore an au­di­ence that in­clud­ed gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, ju­di­cial of­fi­cers, mem­bers of the diplo­mat­ic corps and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tions, Stew­art said, "Some of them (pris­on­ers) re­al­ly out ah tim­ing, bad. And, you hear­ing peo­ple talk­ing, talk­ing like if these peo­ple here for preach­ing on the pul­pit or for spit­ting on the side­walk.

They com­ing in there (prison) and telling yuh how to run your area. Doh search them, doh touch them, doh talk to them. And then, it have peo­ple with bet­ter sense sup­port­ing them. But with Stew­art, it have to have an or­der. Doh cross the bor­der."

He laud­ed the work of Vi­sion On Mis­sion and sim­i­lar NGOs which stood firm in the bat­tle to save the hearts and minds of in­mates.The Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er warned that there was re­bel­lion in­side and out­side of the pris­ons sys­tem and this was not a mat­ter to be dealt with sole­ly by his of­fi­cers, but so­ci­ety.

"They are re­belling against au­thor­i­ty. That is what we see­ing. It is not about Stew­art and prison and what we do­ing. For us to car­ry out our law­ful, le­git­i­mate du­ties, it have enough op­po­si­tion. It have enough threats to your lives. Your life at risk to­tal­ly. And, is time peo­ple recog­nise cor­rec­tion­al of­fi­cers and the sac­ri­fice that they have to make on a dai­ly ba­sis, putting their lives at risk. Salute the kind of work that we do­ing...be­cause when no­body doh want them and cast them out or if the sys­tems fail, they say here Stew­art, you'll fix that for me and send them out bet­ter than they came in," he said.

Jus­tice Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har, who al­so spoke at the cer­e­mo­ny, said the time had come for of­fi­cers of the Pris­ons Ser­vice to stop be­ing treat­ed as a sec­ond class di­vi­sion of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and jus­tice sys­tems.The line min­is­ter said it was easy to pro­vide re­sources, but with­out warm bod­ies and warm hearts, and gen­tle car­ing minds and souls to ex­e­cute the re­spec­tive du­ties, noth­ing could be ac­com­plished.