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Friday, July 11, 2025

Prison Service gets new security hardware

by

Bobie-Lee Dixon
2154 days ago
20190817
Ambassador Joseph Mondello presents Prisons Commissioner Gerard Wilson with the new equipment at the Trinidad and Tobago Prison Service administration building.

Ambassador Joseph Mondello presents Prisons Commissioner Gerard Wilson with the new equipment at the Trinidad and Tobago Prison Service administration building.

Courtesy US Embassy

Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Ger­ard Wil­son is more con­fi­dent now that the prison ser­vice is well on its way to win­ning the war against the crim­i­nal el­e­ments who con­tin­ue to con­duct their op­er­a­tions from be­hind prison walls.

Ad­mit­ting that the high oc­cur­rence of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty from with­in the pris­ons had be­come a bit over­whelm­ing in re­cent times, par­tic­u­lar­ly when prison of­fi­cers be­came the tar­get, Wil­son said yes­ter­day the re­cent and on­go­ing joint ef­forts of the var­i­ous arms of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and the in­tel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty were bear­ing fruit. He said with the dif­fer­ent arms of law en­for­cmenet work­ing to­geth­er to clamp down on crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty from be­hind bars, there had been vis­ibe im­prove­ment in the ef­fi­cien­cy of ob­tain­ing the rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion need­ed to en­sure of­fi­cers are safe.

The ser­vice’s ef­forts were boost­ed on Fri­day, when the US Em­bassy, in its con­tin­ued ef­forts to as­sist the T&T Prison ser­vice in ex­e­cut­ing its du­ties, do­nat­ed some equip­ment which was sup­posed to up the abil­i­ty to re­spond to emer­gen­cies and al­so track the crim­i­nal net­works car­ry­ing out op­er­a­tions from be­hind bars. The em­bassy do­nat­ed coun­ter­feit cur­ren­cy de­tec­tion ma­chines, ri­ot gear kits and com­put­er hard­ware.

The do­na­tion was made through the Caribbean Basin Se­cu­ri­ty Ini­tia­tive, util­is­ing fund­ing from the US De­part­ment of State’s Bu­reau of In­ter­na­tion­al Nar­cotics and Law En­force­ment Af­fairs.

In hand­ing over the com­put­er hard­ware, US Am­bas­sador Joseph N Mon­del­lo said it would al­low the prison ser­vice to bet­ter iden­ti­fy and track the crim­i­nal net­works ac­tive in the pris­ons. Mon­del­lo said it was his plea­sure to con­tin­ue their work with the T&T Prison Ser­vice as they sought to pro­mote and main­tain a more ef­fec­tive­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly run prison ser­vice where true re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion could take place.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Wil­son said he could not give any fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on this for se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons.

“The ma­chin­ery that is be­ing re­ceived from the US is an area I can­not re­al­ly dis­close be­cause it is a se­cu­ri­ty is­sue and I would not be able to ex­plain what it does. How­ev­er, I am cer­tain it would help in the fight against il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties,” Wil­son said, adding it would help the T&T Prison Ser­vice cre­at­ing a more ef­fec­tive prison sys­tem.

He said the US Em­bassy had been fund­ing sev­er­al train­ing pro­grammes and many prison of­fi­cers had ben­e­fit­ed from them with­in the last two or three years.

Re­cent­ly, he said of­fi­cers at­tend­ed a US De­part­ment of State-spon­sored “Mock Prison Ri­ot” train­ing ex­er­cise in West Vir­ginia, while he re­cent­ly ben­e­fit­ed from a one-month course in Ger­many on ter­ror­ism.

Asked to com­ment on the ac­cu­ra­cy of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith’s rev­e­la­tion on Fri­day that in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing had af­firmed at least 50 mur­ders had been con­duct­ed fol­low­ing ‘hits’ sent from the na­tion’s prison, Wil­son said the po­lice ser­vice and oth­er ex­ter­nal se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies/in­tel­li­gen­cies would be bet­ter be pre­pared to an­swer that ques­tion.


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