Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds has made a stern ap­peal for the po­lice ser­vice to crack down on drug blocks around the coun­try. Min­is­ter Hinds made the com­ment on Wednes­day as he de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the launch of the Case Care Man­age­ment pi­lot project.

The ini­tia­tive pro­motes al­ter­na­tives to in­car­cer­a­tion for in­di­vid­u­als with sub­stance use dis­or­ders fac­ing mi­nor or non-vi­o­lent drug-re­lat­ed or oth­er crim­i­nal charges. The pro­gramme has been iden­ti­fied as hav­ing the po­ten­tial to ben­e­fit the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem by pro­vid­ing treat­ment to re­ha­bil­i­tate of­fend­ers and rein­te­grate them in­to so­ci­ety.

Il­lic­it nar­co-traf­fick­ing has long been linked to fu­elling crime in this coun­try, Min­is­ter Hinds said the po­lice must do more to com­bat the scourge of drug blocks in com­mu­ni­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to him, “There are ob­vi­ous drug blocks in Trinidad and To­ba­go where every cit­i­zen in­clud­ing our tod­dlers see on a dai­ly ba­sis, the lines of af­flict­ed hu­man be­ings go­ing to get their fix and go back. In ad­di­tion to that, the po­lice ser­vice has a role to in­ter­vene, to in­ter­dict and to, let me put it in col­lo­qui­al terms, mash up them drug blocks, it’s as sim­ple as that.”

Min­is­ter Hinds as­sured that de­spite re­ports point­ing to this coun­try’s porous bor­ders as be­ing re­spon­si­ble for the con­tin­ued drug trade, it re­mains high on his min­istry’s radar.

“This two-year pi­lot project is be­ing launched at a time both time­ly and op­por­tune and is be­ing launched at a time when coun­tries all over the globe bat­tle dai­ly with the tran­ship­ment of il­lic­it nar­cotics, hu­man traf­fick­ing. For that rea­son, bor­der con­trol and man­age­ment is a high pri­or­i­ty of the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The Case Care Man­age­ment Project is a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Pro­ba­tion Ser­vices Di­vi­sion and the In­ter-Amer­i­can Drug Abuse Con­trol Com­mis­sion. The sys­tem seeks to en­hance the co­or­di­na­tion amongst the jus­tice, health and so­cial sys­tems to as­sist with peo­ple’s re­cov­ery.

ES-CI­CAD Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary Adam Namm said the project was aimed at pro­vid­ing an all-em­brac­ing sys­tem of care for peo­ple with sub­stance abuse dis­or­ders.

“It will pro­vide the need­ed in­ter­ven­tions to fa­cil­i­tate the most pos­i­tive out­comes from par­tic­i­pat­ing drug of­fend­ers in the ar­eas of re­duced sub­stance use, in­creased pos­i­tive func­tion­ing in all ar­eas of their lives and a re­duc­tion in re­cidi­vism,” Namm said.

So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Min­is­ter Don­na Cox al­so ac­knowl­edged the cost-sav­ing ben­e­fits that are as­so­ci­at­ed with the pro­gramme and its abil­i­ty to fur­ther re­duce the coun­try’s pris­ons pop­u­la­tion.