Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­raspe says the shar­ing of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for the prison sys­tem be­tween Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der and Min­is­ter of Jus­tice De­vesh Ma­haraj will bode well for the ef­fec­tive func­tion­ing of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

Cor­raspe made the re­marks one day af­ter the roles and func­tions of dif­fer­ent min­istries were gazetted on Fri­day.

The no­tice out­lined that while Alexan­der would have over­sight for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice, in­clud­ing prison ser­vice re­form, com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and pa­role and pris­on­er man­age­ment, Ma­haraj would be re­spon­si­ble for pro­ba­tion ser­vices, of­fend­er man­age­ment (in­clud­ing the youth re-of­fend­er pro­gramme), re­form and trans­for­ma­tion.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Cor­raspe said while he was wait­ing for di­rec­tion from the min­istries on which as­pects of the prison sys­tem they will have di­rect over­sight of, he felt the shar­ing of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties was nec­es­sary giv­en the unique role of the prison as an in­sti­tu­tion.

“The po­lice would ar­rest and charge; the courts would ad­ju­di­cate, and the pro­ba­tion de­part­ment would do the risk as­sess­ment, and if it is con­sid­ered the risk is sig­nif­i­cant, the pris­on­er comes to the prison un­der sen­tenc­ing.

“Of course when the per­son is at the pre-con­vic­tion phase and the mat­ter is go­ing through the court, the per­son may al­so be re­mand­ed to the prison, so of course when we talk about the prison in the con­text of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty with con­tra­band, but of course the move­ment of the in­mates, es­pe­cial­ly when we’re speak­ing of is­sues of prison re­form, pa­role as a post-con­di­tion­al re­lease sys­tem to as­sist with rein­te­gra­tion, all of those would be part of the jus­tice sys­tem.”

Alexan­der met with Cor­raspe and the prison ser­vice’s lead­er­ship on May 13, where they dis­cussed en­hanc­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al sup­port and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ini­tia­tives.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, pres­i­dent of the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) Ger­ard Gor­don agreed that the de­ci­sion would en­hance the ef­fi­cien­cy of the prison ser­vice.

Asked if he felt hav­ing an­oth­er min­istry in­volved in over­see­ing the func­tion­ing of prison ac­tiv­i­ties would cre­ate con­fu­sion in the hi­er­ar­chy, Gor­don said he did not an­tic­i­pate any prob­lems.

“It is not a bad fit, and I don’t an­tic­i­pate any clash­es be­tween the day-to-day op­er­a­tions of what we do cur­rent­ly and then hav­ing the sup­port of the Min­istry of Jus­tice to treat with prison re­form and trans­for­ma­tion, which is cer­tain­ly need­ed for the na­tion.”

He added, “I am mov­ing for­ward and an­tic­i­pat­ing that we will be able to meet and treat with the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers in the Min­istries of Home­land, De­fence and Jus­tice to treat with some of the long-stand­ing chal­lenges that we do face.”

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj for com­ment via phone call and What­sApp, but he did not re­spond up to late yes­ter­day.