Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Af­ter stand­ing for more than two cen­turies, the his­toric Port-of-Spain Prison will soon be de­com­mis­sioned and the in­mates there will be tem­porar­i­ly re­lo­cat­ed to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment had made the promise soon af­ter tak­ing of­fice, fol­low­ing com­plaints from prison of­fi­cers that the fa­cil­i­ty was un­fit for pur­pose and crit­i­cism from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty that it was an eye­sore.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net news brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der said, “This fa­cil­i­ty has been re­port­ed­ly con­demned by courts, has been un­fit for hous­ing pris­on­ers, and has cost the state mil­lions of dol­lars in dam­ages for breach­es of the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of per­sons.”

Call­ing the fa­cil­i­ty “sub-hu­man”, Alexan­der said in­stead of con­tin­u­ing the pay­ment of com­pen­sa­tion to pris­on­ers for the breach of their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights due to the state of the fa­cil­i­ty, the state will now save mon­ey and in­vest it in a “state-of-the-art” prison fa­cil­i­ty, which he said would be mod­ernised to as­sist in re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and restora­tive jus­tice.

He said this move will be done with the full sup­port of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in and around the cap­i­tal, adding it will be done in four phas­es.

“The first phase will be, in fact, re­mov­ing pris­on­ers from Port-of-Spain to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca, con­demned per­sons and per­sons on re­mand, and we’ll con­tin­ue do­ing that un­til the prison is no more.”

Alexan­der said it was high time that prison of­fi­cers are put in a place where they can con­trol the en­vi­ron­ment.

Asked where the new fa­cil­i­ty will be built, Alexan­der said, “We’ll bring that to you. And al­so, let me al­so say that the prison present­ly at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty will be up­grad­ed.

“So, af­ter that, af­ter a cou­ple con­ver­sa­tions with you, then you’ll un­der­stand where we’re go­ing at. Some things we need to keep for our­selves, you know that? We help you some­times with in­for­ma­tion, but some things you keep to your­self.”

Told that among the prison pop­u­la­tion are peo­ple who have not yet been con­vict­ed and asked if he an­tic­i­pat­ed any push back from the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go or any oth­er law bod­ies, Alexan­der said le­gal opin­ions were sought and he does not an­tic­i­pate any fall­out.

Asked what the cur­rent prison pop­u­la­tion in the Port-of-Spain fa­cil­i­ty is, he said, “While we want to give you an ex­act fig­ure, we would want to hold on that un­til a fur­ther no­tice, be­cause we want to give you the cor­rect fig­ure.”

He al­so did not want to say when the re­lo­ca­tion process would com­mence or the cur­rent prison pop­u­la­tion at the Arou­ca fa­cil­i­ty.

Asked if there is room at the Arou­ca fa­cil­i­ty, Alexan­der said, “MSP is a big area, you know, where it could take a lot of things, a lot of new in­fra­struc­ture to treat a lot of sit­u­a­tions. And we prob­a­bly will be look­ing at that, al­though there are some oth­er ar­eas that we have lo­cat­ed, maybe with the in­ten­tion of treat­ing with it in terms of prison and prison fa­cil­i­ties.”

The Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter said the Car­rera Is­land Prison Fa­cil­i­ty could al­so ab­sorb pris­on­ers.

The an­nounce­ment was im­me­di­ate­ly wel­comed by the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (POA), which be­lieves while the Port-of-Spain fa­cil­i­ty holds his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance, it has long been in­ad­e­quate to meet the needs of the mod­ern cor­rec­tion sys­tem.

Pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don told Guardian Me­dia, “The as­so­ci­a­tion, there­fore, views the move to­ward de­com­mis­sion­ing as a nec­es­sary step. A step we have been ask­ing for the last few years.”

The POA said once the re­lo­ca­tion and de­com­mis­sion­ing are sup­port­ed by prop­er plan­ning, suf­fi­cient re­sources and clear vi­sion for the fu­ture in­car­cer­a­tion and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of pris­on­ers in this coun­try, it will be suc­cess­ful.

“Our fo­cus re­mains on en­sur­ing that the process not on­ly strength­ens se­cu­ri­ty but al­so pro­vides im­proved con­di­tions for both in­mates and of­fi­cers,” Gor­don said.