When a na­tion de­clares a state of emer­gency, it is ex­pect­ed that a con­crete, trans­par­ent plan to re­claim con­trol from the crim­i­nal el­e­ment would nat­u­ral­ly fol­low.

In Ju­ly, the Gov­ern­ment im­posed such a mea­sure, while re­veal­ing that crim­i­nal net­works op­er­at­ing from with­in the prison sys­tem were threat­en­ing the po­lice, ju­di­cia­ry, and po­lit­i­cal fig­ures.

The hope, there­fore, was that the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and its agen­cies would move de­ci­sive­ly to re­store or­der, tight­en over­sight, and pre­vent fur­ther breach­es.

But just two days ago, we learned of yet an­oth­er at­tempt to smug­gle con­tra­band in­to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison us­ing a drone.

That such a breach could oc­cur months in­to the State of Emer­gency, and at the very prison where il­le­gal, or­gan­ised crime ac­tiv­i­ty re­port­ed­ly trig­gered the dras­tic mea­sure in the first place, is a stark in­di­ca­tion that ef­forts by the State to take back con­trol from the crim­i­nal el­e­ment are still falling well short.

Over the years, suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions have tout­ed scan­ning tech­nol­o­gy, sig­nal-jam­ming and an­ti-drone sys­tems as so­lu­tions to con­tra­band smug­gling with­in the pris­ons.

Yet, de­spite these pro­nounce­ments, elab­o­rate strate­gic plans have nev­er made it past the pages they were writ­ten on.

For in­stance, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty’s Strate­gic Plan for 2018–2023 list­ed laud­able goals for re­duc­ing crime, with spe­cif­ic at­ten­tion to prison re­form.

If those goals had been achieved, we would not to­day be faced with a prison sys­tem that is seem­ing­ly more ef­fec­tive at fa­cil­i­tat­ing crime than re­duc­ing it.

As ear­ly as 2016, then-pris­ons com­mis­sion­er Ster­ling Stew­art con­firmed that full-body scan­ners were op­er­a­tional and had al­ready proven ef­fec­tive, cit­ing the de­tec­tion of con­tra­band on a prison of­fi­cer. Stew­art had al­so de­clared un­equiv­o­cal­ly that jam­mers were in­stalled and “func­tion­al,” while boast­ing that in­mates could “no longer use their cell phones to con­tact peo­ple” be­cause the tech­nol­o­gy was in place to “jam the fre­quen­cy of their cell phones.”

At the time, this was pre­sent­ed as a de­ci­sive vic­to­ry in the fight against con­tra­band. But as with too many of our in­sti­tu­tions, the fol­low-through and main­te­nance of these mea­sures have been abysmal.

With the na­tion­al bud­get loom­ing, this is the mo­ment for clar­i­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Prison se­cu­ri­ty must be placed high on the list of pri­or­i­ties. If the State tru­ly re­gards crim­i­nal in­fil­tra­tion of pris­ons as an ex­is­ten­tial threat, then it must ded­i­cate funds for high-per­for­mance drone de­tec­tion and coun­ter­mea­sure sys­tems, uni­ver­sal X-ray and body-scan­ning equip­ment at every en­try point, and elec­tro­mag­net­ic de­tec­tion and cell-sig­nal block­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

For fis­cal 2025, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty re­ceived an al­lo­ca­tion of $6.113 bil­lion. While the prison ser­vice ac­counts for on­ly a frac­tion of this to­tal, spe­cif­ic line items from the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme over sev­er­al fis­cal years show a con­tin­u­ous stream of fund­ing di­rect­ed at prison se­cu­ri­ty and fa­cil­i­ty up­grades.

How­ev­er, these al­lo­ca­tions re­veal a pat­tern of re­ac­tive spend­ing, fo­cused large­ly on patch­ing de­cayed in­fra­struc­ture, like plumb­ing, fences, and roofs, rather than proac­tive in­vest­ment in the tech­nol­o­gy, in­tel­li­gence, and hu­man cap­i­tal need­ed to counter mod­ern threats.

But where se­cu­ri­ty is con­cerned, there can be no ex­cuse or de­lay. Coun­tries from Mex­i­co to Colom­bia and across Eu­rope al­ready de­ploy drone-de­feat sys­tems, ge­ofenc­ing, and uni­ver­sal staff scan­ning.

While we have much small­er bud­gets, we can­not ig­nore the grav­i­ty of the prob­lem.

It is time Trinidad and To­ba­go fol­lows suit and adopts in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices in prison se­cu­ri­ty.