Shal­iza Has­sanali

Pres­i­dent of the Prison Of­fi­cers' As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, Ra­jku­mar Ram­roop, has said that prison of­fi­cers are con­cerned with the num­ber of pris­on­ers en­ter­ing the sys­tem dur­ing the state of emer­gency. "Yes, prison of­fi­cers are con­cerned with re­spect to the num­ber of pris­on­ers com­ing in­to the sys­tem be­cause we have al­ready been faced with a over­crowd­ed sit­u­a­tion and it would place a fur­ther bur­den in­to the sys­tem," Ram­roop said yes­ter­day, as po­lice of­fi­cers and army em­barked on its as­sault against crim­i­nal and crim­i­nal gangs through­out the coun­try. Ram­roop did not say what were some of the com­plaints dis­cussed with ad­min­is­tra­tion and deputy com­mis­sion­er of pris­ons Mar­tin Mar­tinez re­cent­ly. As of yes­ter­day over 500 ar­rests were made.

So far, Ram­roop said there had not been any com­plaints of ten­sion among in­car­cer­at­ed gang lead­ers and mem­bers, promis­ing that if this should hap­pen prison of­fi­cers will act ac­cord­ing­ly. Ram­roop could not say how many of those ar­rest­ed were locked up in the na­tions' pris­ons. Stress­ing that his of­fi­cers have been man­ag­ing since the state of emer­gency, Ram­roop said many of the men ar­rest­ed had been be­ing de­tained at po­lice sta­tions. Un­der pris­ons reg­u­la­tions, Ram­roop said Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy has the pow­er to send pris­on­ers else­where, if the jails be­come over­crowd­ed. Dur­ing the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup, Ram­roop said the Ch­aguara­mas Con­ven­tion Cen­tre was utilised as a prison fa­cil­i­ty to de­tain loot­ers and crim­i­nals.

"There are oth­er op­tions that we can look at." In a state of emer­gency, Ram­roop said a num­ber of things take places, in­clud­ing the sus­pen­sion of va­ca­tion leave of pris­ons of­fi­cers. Al­so of­fi­cers who were ex­pect­ed to take spe­cial leave will al­so be called out. There are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,200 pris­ons of­fi­cers in the ser­vice. Ram­roop said an­oth­er 600 pris­ons of­fi­cers who are be­ing trained, Ram­roop said can be called out, if the need aris­es. "This brings the ques­tion of prison re­form. For years the as­so­ci­a­tion has been ad­vo­cat­ing for this. The time has come for the Gov­ern­ment to relook and re­assess the en­tire prison sys­tem with a view of im­prov­ing it."

In­sist­ing that the role of prison of­fi­cer was to as­sist law and or­der, Ram­roop said while every­thing was un­der con­trol, should things get out of hand, cer­tain­ly, we (as­so­ci­a­tion) will ad­vo­cate on be­half of our mem­ber­ship." Ram­roop said while politi­cians have made calls, stress­ing what was cor­rect or not with re­spect to the state of emer­gency, "That is not our po­si­tion to de­bate." The prison of­fi­cers' job, Ram­roop said was to en­sure that pris­on­ers are treat­ed with dig­ni­ty based on in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards, which has al­ways pre­sent­ed a chal­lenge to the prison as­so­ci­a­tion and the Gov­ern­ment. "The cur­rent sit­u­a­tion clear­ly in­di­cates the vi­tal role that prison of­fi­cers play in crime re­duc­tion and pub­lic safe­ty."