Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith has thrown his sup­port be­hind the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to de­com­mis­sion the his­toric Port-of-Spain Prison, de­scrib­ing it as a long over­due step in the right di­rec­tion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Grif­fith, who served on the 2013 Spe­cial Pris­ons Com­mit­tee tasked with re­view­ing the state of the coun­try’s pe­nal fa­cil­i­ties, said the move aligned with rec­om­men­da­tions made more than a decade ago about the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing and out­dat­ed con­di­tions at the Fred­er­ick Street com­pound.

“This is a step in the right di­rec­tion, but what it will take now is to be able to build a prop­er prison to have sys­tems to en­sure we stop the prob­lems we have had for the last few years with pris­on­ers hav­ing full ac­cess to com­mu­ni­ca­tion and al­so try to find ways and means that when per­sons are in­car­cer­at­ed, they don’t come out more sea­soned and hard­ened crim­i­nals,” Grif­fith stat­ed.

Among the rec­om­men­da­tions made by the com­mit­tee, head­ed by crim­i­nol­o­gist Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran, was the ac­qui­si­tion of more beds.

“In ad­di­tion, im­me­di­ate mea­sures must be pur­sued to­ward the pro­vi­sion of im­proved light­ing, plumb­ing, and toi­let fa­cil­i­ties in the cells at the Re­mand Prison. These im­prove­ments must be made with­in six months,” the com­mit­tee’s re­port stat­ed.

The prison, which dates back to the 19th cen­tu­ry, has for years drawn crit­i­cism from hu­man rights groups and se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts, who point­ed to se­vere over­crowd­ing, poor san­i­ta­tion and lim­it­ed space for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes.

Grif­fith em­pha­sised, how­ev­er, that the clo­sure must be paired with wider re­form mea­sures, in­clud­ing the ex­pan­sion of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion fa­cil­i­ties, im­proved staff train­ing, and a greater fo­cus on re­duc­ing re­cidi­vism.

Mean­while, Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don as­sured his mem­ber­ship would work along­side the au­thor­i­ties to en­sure the tran­si­tion was smooth.

“What I can say is that with new and mod­ern con­struc­tion tech­nol­o­gy, such a fa­cil­i­ty does not have to take years to be re­alised.

“We are al­so pre­pared to work along­side the min­istry, the min­is­ter, and the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons to see it come to re­al­i­ty much soon­er rather than lat­er. We sup­port the move.”

On Thurs­day, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der said the Port-of- Spain in­mates would be tem­porar­i­ly re­lo­cat­ed to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca un­til a new fa­cil­i­ty is con­struct­ed.