Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) Ger­ard Gor­don has ques­tioned whether act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Car­los Cor­raspe was af­ford­ed due process be­fore be­ing sent on four months’ ac­cu­mu­lat­ed va­ca­tion leave amid al­le­ga­tions sur­round­ing the treat­ment of de­tainee Do­minic Hadeed, founder and ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of Blue Wa­ters Prod­ucts Ltd, at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison.

Cor­raspe was sent on leave af­ter con­cerns were raised by the POA over the treat­ment of Hadeed, who is be­ing held un­der a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO).

POA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Lester Lo­gie pre­vi­ous­ly claimed of­fi­cers re­port­ed that Hadeed was be­ing al­lowed out of his cell late at night and was watch­ing World Cup match­es in the prison’s ad­min­is­tra­tive build­ing while oth­er de­tainees re­mained locked in their cells.

Lo­gie said the al­leged pref­er­en­tial treat­ment had cre­at­ed ten­sions with­in the prison and placed of­fi­cers’ safe­ty at risk af­ter oth­er de­tainees al­leged­ly threat­ened prison staff. He said those con­cerns were out­lined in a let­ter sent to Cor­raspe, with copies sent to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Gor­don re­ject­ed claims that ac­cess to tele­vi­sion amount­ed to spe­cial treat­ment.

“There are tele­vi­sions across the length and breadth of the prison ser­vice that in­mates ac­cess. There are tele­vi­sions in dor­mi­to­ries. There are tele­vi­sions in ex­er­cise yards. So that is not a for­eign oc­cur­rence,” he said.

He al­so dis­missed sug­ges­tions that the con­di­tions de­scribed con­sti­tut­ed pref­er­en­tial treat­ment.

“I don’t know what is spe­cial treat­ment be­hind the walls of the prison. You are in­car­cer­at­ed. Your lib­er­ties and civ­il lib­er­ties have been rolled back. You can­not go as you please. You can­not eat what you want,” Gor­don said.

Turn­ing to Cor­raspe’s re­moval from ac­tive du­ty, Gor­don said what had been re­port­ed to him was that the Com­mis­sion­er had been sent on va­ca­tion leave.

He not­ed that the Of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons falls un­der the au­thor­i­ty of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and ques­tioned whether the prop­er pro­ce­dures had been fol­lowed.

“We don’t have any­thing in our reg­u­la­tions or the Pub­lic Ser­vice Reg­u­la­tion that speaks to ad­min­is­tra­tive leave,” Gor­don said.

“And if, as I’ve heard some peo­ple talk about sus­pen­sion, then you go in­to this whole is­sue of nat­ur­al jus­tice. So what is the charge? And was the in­di­vid­ual giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond to what­ev­er al­le­ga­tions were made? And none of that hap­pened.”

Gor­don’s com­ments come as the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion re­mains un­der scruti­ny fol­low­ing re­ports of di­vi­sions with­in its ex­ec­u­tive over the man­ner in which gen­er­al sec­re­tary Lo­gie pub­licly han­dled the mat­ter in­volv­ing Cor­raspe.

The as­so­ci­a­tion has not pub­licly ad­dressed the re­port­ed di­vi­sions.

Be­yond the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Hadeed, Gor­don al­so spoke about the wider chal­lenges cre­at­ed by the in­creased use of PDOs and the pres­sure they have placed on the prison sys­tem giv­en ex­ist­ing is­sues with in­fra­struc­ture and re­sources.

He said de­tainees held un­der PDOs are kept sep­a­rate from oth­er prison pop­u­la­tions as far as prac­ti­ca­ble, in­clud­ing re­mand and con­vict­ed in­mates.

“Those in­di­vid­u­als, the de­tainees, are kept as much as is prac­ti­ca­ble or prac­ti­cal, sep­a­rate from any oth­er prison pop­u­la­tion, whether it be the re­man­dees or the con­vict­ed pop­u­la­tion,” Gor­don said.

How­ev­er, Gor­don said the prison ser­vice’s abil­i­ty to ac­com­mo­date the grow­ing num­ber of de­tainees is lim­it­ed by the re­sources avail­able.

“The thing about it is that our fa­cil­i­ties, when we talk about how do we treat with them, you could on­ly treat with them as far as the in­fra­struc­ture and re­sources would al­low,” he said.

He said the prison ser­vice must con­tin­ue try­ing to bal­ance se­cu­ri­ty re­quire­ments with the oblig­a­tion to pro­vide hu­mane con­di­tions for all peo­ple in cus­tody.