The Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice has la­belled as “fake news”, re­ports in so­cial me­dia that pris­on­ers had es­caped re­cent­ly from the Car­rera Con­vict Prison.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment in its so­cial me­dia pages, the Prison Ser­vice as­sert­ed that all in­mates at the Car­rera fa­cil­i­ty are present and ac­count­ed for.

In ad­di­tion, the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons (Ag) de­scribed the re­ports as “mis­chie­vous and at­ten­tion-seek­ing”, and gave as­sur­ances that the Car­rera in­mates were safe­ly in cus­tody.

The fol­low­ing is the full text of the state­ment is­sued by the Prison Ser­vice on the mat­ter…

“The Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice makes ref­er­ence to re­ports cir­cu­lat­ing via so­cial me­dia, rel­a­tive to pris­on­ers es­cap­ing from the Car­rera Con­vict Prison, and ad­vis­es that such re­ports are false.

Con­trary to these un­found­ed and un­true re­ports, all pris­on­ers are at this time ac­count­ed for at the in­sti­tu­tion. 

Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons (Ag), Mr. De­op­er­sad Ra­moutar strong­ly re­futes these re­ports and re­gards them as 'mis­chie­vous and at­ten­tion-seek­ing'. He is re­as­sur­ing fam­i­lies of in­car­cer­at­ed in­di­vid­u­als and mem­bers of the pub­lic that all per­sons un­der his charge are ac­count­ed for.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice con­tin­ues to place du­ty of care to all un­der its charge. Re­spect and per­for­mance are en­cour­aged which in turn pro­motes ef­fec­tive and suc­cess­ful man­age­ment.”