Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice is be­ing set up to con­tin­u­ous­ly fail the pop­u­la­tion be­cause of chron­ic un­der-re­sourc­ing, de­te­ri­o­rat­ing in­fra­struc­ture and a lack of con­sul­ta­tion with prison of­fi­cers, ac­cord­ing to Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don.

Gor­don made the com­ments dur­ing an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, as the coun­try tran­si­tions from the State of Emer­gency (SoE) to the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill and in­creased se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions.

He said re­gard­less of the leg­is­la­tion be­ing used to tack­le crime, the prison sys­tem re­mains a crit­i­cal part of the wider crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and must be ad­e­quate­ly re­sourced.

He said im­prove­ments in polic­ing, ar­rests and pros­e­cu­tions would have lim­it­ed ef­fect if the prison sys­tem re­mained ne­glect­ed.

Gor­don said the fo­cus must ex­tend be­yond in­car­cer­at­ing peo­ple to en­sur­ing that those re­leased from prison are bet­ter pre­pared to re­turn to so­ci­ety.

He not­ed that more than 90 per cent of pris­on­ers would even­tu­al­ly re­turn to so­ci­ety and ques­tioned the con­di­tions in which they would be re­leased.

Gor­don al­so raised con­cerns about the con­di­tions faced by both pris­on­ers and prison of­fi­cers, point­ing to out­stand­ing over­time pay­ments of about $148 mil­lion, a lack of uni­forms, in­ad­e­quate wa­ter sup­plies and fail­ing in­fra­struc­ture.

He was re­spond­ing to al­le­ga­tions made by a for­mer de­tainee about con­di­tions at the fa­cil­i­ty in the east, in­clud­ing poor food, in­ad­e­quate toi­let fa­cil­i­ties and al­leged phys­i­cal abuse by some of­fi­cers.

Gor­don said the claims should be in­ves­ti­gat­ed be­fore be­ing treat­ed as fact, but ac­knowl­edged that the cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment could con­tribute to mis­treat­ment.

“I am one, I’m not here to de­ny any­thing. I wasn’t there. But what I’m say­ing is, the en­vi­ron­ment is ripe for that,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Gor­don, both of­fi­cers and de­tainees are op­er­at­ing un­der se­vere pres­sure, while of­fi­cers are still ex­pect­ed to main­tain pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards.

He said sev­er­al prison fa­cil­i­ties are suf­fer­ing from se­ri­ous in­fra­struc­ture prob­lems.

The Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, which he de­scribed as the newest pur­pose-built fa­cil­i­ty, has al­ready ex­ceed­ed its ex­pect­ed life cy­cle, he said.

Gor­don cit­ed faulty gates and locks, poor light­ing, in­ad­e­quate ven­ti­la­tion and the ab­sence of a gen­er­a­tor or back­up pow­er.

He al­so point­ed to the age of oth­er fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing Car­rera and the lack of a pur­pose-built prison in To­ba­go, where old cells at the Scar­bor­ough Po­lice Sta­tion have been used to house pris­on­ers.

Gor­don ques­tioned the con­tin­ued use of fa­cil­i­ties that he said were not fit for pur­pose and said the sit­u­a­tion was con­tribut­ing to wider prob­lems with­in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

He al­so crit­i­cised the lack of con­sul­ta­tion be­tween the au­thor­i­ties and the POA, say­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion was not be­ing en­gaged on de­ci­sions af­fect­ing of­fi­cers and the prison sys­tem.