JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Elvin Scant­er­bury says the ar­rest of a fe­male prison of­fi­cer on Mon­day is a tes­ta­ment to the ef­forts of prison of­fi­cers to weed out rogue of­fi­cers from with­in the Prison Ser­vice.

Scant­er­bury made the com­ment yes­ter­day at the 13th in­stal­ment of the Prison Ser­vice’s Art Ex­hi­bi­tion at the Na­tion­al Li­brary, Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain.

He said the Prison Ser­vice would con­tin­ue its ef­forts to iden­ti­fy and ad­dress wrong­do­ing with­in its ranks.

“We would con­tin­ue to do our in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing, our sur­veil­lance and de­pend­ing on sup­port from our oth­er part­ners in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem so that we can ad­dress this sit­u­a­tion head-on. It’s re­al­ly con­trary to what we are try­ing to do in terms of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion so we are con­tin­u­ing to press to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion as soon as pos­si­ble,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease, the fe­male of­fi­cer, who has 19 years of ser­vice, was ar­rest­ed with the items as she at­tempt­ed to en­ter the prison dur­ing her va­ca­tion pe­ri­od.

Of­fi­cers al­leged­ly found 458 pack­ets of cig­a­rettes, 189 grammes of mar­i­jua­na, two head­sets, eight AAA bat­ter­ies and 12 ef­fer­ves­cent tablets used to treat uri­nary tract in­fec­tions.

The fe­male prison of­fi­cer was sub­se­quent­ly de­tained pend­ing fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion.