Gail Alexan­der

The pep­per spray regime is on course for im­ple­men­ta­tion but there has been a re­cent threat to a prison of­fi­cer and Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues its strug­gle with il­le­gal com­mu­ni­ca­tions in pris­ons, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds told the Sen­ate yes­ter­day.

Hinds, who was pi­lot­ing the Firearms (Amend­ment) Bill in the Up­per House, gave de­tails of the “jail­house econ­o­my” op­er­at­ing in the prison sys­tem. He said it in­volves “plen­ty, plen­ty, plen­ty mon­ey.”

The bill pro­vides for a firearms users iden­ti­ty card sim­i­lar to a na­tion­al ID card. In ad­di­tion, off-du­ty prison of­fi­cers whose lives are un­der threat—as as­sessed by the Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er—will be grant­ed Gov­ern­ment-is­sued firearms and mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers will be giv­en non-lethal weapons.

The leg­is­la­tion al­so al­lows the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter to ex­tend firearms users’ li­cences be­yond the stip­u­lat­ed three years.

Hinds said in all cat­e­gories un­der the pep­per spray regime, peo­ple have ap­plied to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for per­mits as the law re­quires.

“So the pep­per spray regime is on course,” he said.

Hinds not­ed the toll crime is tak­ing dai­ly with law en­force­ment and prison of­fi­cers among the tar­gets of crim­i­nals. He said the Prison Act isn’t wide enough to pro­tect cer­tain peo­ple whose lives are at risk due to their jobs and there are al­so threats from in­mates.

Cit­ing news­pa­per re­ports about prison of­fi­cers los­ing their lives, Hinds said re­cent­ly, prison of­fi­cials had to go to the “the­atre of threat” to deal with an im­mi­nent one against an of­fi­cer. He said the of­fi­cer was un­aware of the threat but it came to law en­force­ment’s at­ten­tion.

He said ur­gent amend­ments to the law are al­so nec­es­sary fol­low­ing the judg­ment in the case of po­lice of­fi­cer Vishal Singh, who was shot by a prison of­fi­cer while re­spond­ing to a call. He said the crux of the mat­ter was the va­lid­i­ty of the Prison Ser­vice pol­i­cy that stat­ed the Pris­ons’ Com­mis­sion­er has pow­er to is­sue guns and am­mu­ni­tion to of­fi­cers deemed to be on du­ty. The court ruled that the pol­i­cy con­flict­ed with the Firearms Act and prison rules.

Hinds said the bill pro­vides a quick, eas­i­er way to solve an im­me­di­ate prob­lem. He not­ed that prison of­fi­cers might not have the mon­ey to buy a gun or time to ap­ply for a gun li­cence “by which time he might be in trou­ble.”

The bill would al­low the Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er to re­spond with “promp­ti­tude, even at 1 am if nec­es­sary” and of­fi­cers would get firearms which are gov­ern­ment prop­er­ty.

Tak­ing a jab at his po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents, he added, “We see peo­ple who are known mis­cre­ants, crim­i­nals want­ed here there and every­where, com­ing to­geth­er hold­ing hands for ul­te­ri­or po­lit­i­cal and oth­er pur­pos­es.”