Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

Ag Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Den­nis Pul­chan is cur­rent­ly prepar­ing a list of pris­on­ers who are most like­ly to be re­leased as a mea­sure to min­imise a pos­si­ble out­break of the COVID-19 virus with­in the prison sys­tem. How­ev­er, Pul­chan said last evening he would not have a to­tal just yet as he is still com­plet­ing his re­search.

Pul­chan start­ed the process hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day an­nounced that pris­on­ers who have been not able to make bail, those deemed non-vi­o­lent and no dan­ger could be re­leased to re­duce over­crowd­ing and min­imise the spread of COVID-19 dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s.

Row­ley said At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi was in touch with the Ju­di­cia­ry and work was pro­gress­ing to de­ter­mine what they can do to in­ter­vene in the pris­ons to re­duce over­crowd­ing be­cause it’s a “vul­ner­a­ble area.”

“For pris­on­ers who have been con­vict­ed and are on ap­peal, the pop­u­la­tion will un­der­stand that if there are things we can do there with the broad­est sense of un­der­stand­ing, get those peo­ple out of there and I trust we can min­imise our ex­po­sure there for cer­tain cat­e­gories of the in­car­cer­at­ed so that will be an­oth­er step,” he added.

Con­tact­ed lat­er on, Pul­chan said, “I wel­come the move as it is es­sen­tial in this time.”

In a re­lease on the is­sue as well, Pul­chan said the ac­tion came as a di­rect re­sult of the med­ical ad­vice to take cer­tain mea­sures to pro­tect the prison en­vi­ron­ment from any pos­si­ble con­t­a­m­i­na­tion from COVID-19.

He said fam­i­lies were al­lowed to vis­it the pris­ons last week­end to pur­chase items for their loved ones and added that the proac­tive mea­sure was fa­cil­i­tat­ed to al­low the in­mates to ob­tain items be­fore vis­its were sus­pend­ed to pro­tect them. He said all fea­si­ble mea­sures had been im­ple­ment­ed with­in the na­tion’s pris­ons to low­er the risk of both staff and in­mates from con­t­a­m­i­na­tion.

Some of these mea­sures in­clude ther­mal scans of every­one the pris­ons, ad­di­tion­al sinks at strate­gic points, sani­ti­sa­tion of build­ings and sig­nage rel­a­tive to the virus. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the T&T Prison Ser­vice will be im­ple­ment­ing video con­fer­enc­ing via Skype for in­mates to com­mu­ni­cate with their fam­i­lies by pre­arranged ap­point­ments.

“Fam­i­lies are re­mind­ed that the Prison Ser­vice’s tele­phone land­line sys­tem re­mains in op­er­a­tion for clients to speak with their fam­i­lies,” Pul­chan said.

The move was al­so in line with plans by oth­er Caribbean coun­tries.

Ac­cord­ing to a CARI­COM IM­PACS me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing a video con­fer­ence meet­ing on the is­sue last Wednes­day, oth­er re­gion­al pris­ons will be tak­ing the same proac­tive mea­sures.

“Pro­pos­als by prison heads to re­duce COVID-19 in pris­ons at the meet­ing in­clud­ed the ear­ly re­lease of non-vi­o­lent and sick and el­der­ly in­mates who pose ab­solute­ly no threat to so­ci­ety but on­ly serve to in­crease the con­cen­tra­tion of per­sons in pris­ons; in­creased screen­ing of staff and pris­on­ers; en­hanced in­for­ma­tion shar­ing among pris­on­ers and the de­vel­op­ment of na­tion­al prison pan­dem­ic plans.”

The re­lease not­ed that that pris­on­ers have test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 in Chi­na, France, Iran, Italy, the Unit­ed King­dom and the Unit­ed States and visi­ta in most Caribbean coun­tries to avoid the same thing hap­pen­ing.

The CARI­COM IM­PACS re­lease said to ease this bur­den, “com­mu­ni­ca­tion is be­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed through con­trolled What­sApp and Face Time video calls.”