In less than a week, there have been chill­ing re­minders that this coun­try’s prison sys­tem is a pow­der keg that is threat­en­ing to blow apart T&T’s en­tire na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture.

The mur­ders of prison of­fi­cers Trevor Ser­rette and Nigel Jones, fol­lowed by the gun at­tack at the home of a male of­fi­cer on Tues­day night, have brought back in­to sharp fo­cus a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion that has been sim­mer­ing for years with vi­o­lent erup­tions from time to time.

There is an ex­plo­sive sit­u­a­tion be­hind prison walls, where over­crowd­ing, in­creas­ing­ly dan­ger­ous in­mates, prim­i­tive fa­cil­i­ties and the traf­fick­ing and smug­gling fa­cil­i­tat­ed by cor­rupt of­fi­cers, are a tox­ic mix the au­thor­i­ties have been strug­gling for years to bring un­der con­trol.

Not for the first time, the Prison Of­fi­cers' As­so­ci­a­tion (POA), led by their out­spo­ken pres­i­dent Ceron Richards, is de­mand­ing im­me­di­ate ac­tion. They are now seek­ing a meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in his po­si­tion as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, to dis­cuss the lat­est killings of their col­leagues and threats to the lives of oth­er mem­bers.

While their de­mands for bet­ter pro­tec­tion should be heed­ed, there is an even more ur­gent is­sue that needs to be ad­dressed—the com­plic­i­ty of prison of­fi­cers who en­sure dan­ger­ous in­mates have easy ac­cess to cell phones, charg­ers and oth­er con­tra­band to car­ry on their crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es from be­hind bars.

Cor­rupt in­ter­ac­tions be­tween pris­on­ers and prison of­fi­cers have ren­dered al­most use­less the mil­lions of dol­lars in elec­tron­ic se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed in ef­forts to stem il­lic­it in­flows and com­mu­ni­ca­tions. In fact, such ef­forts have been re­duced to ex­er­cis­es in fu­til­i­ty.

Fol­low­ing a dead­ly and short-lived es­cape by four re­mand pris­on­ers from the Port-of-Spain Prison in Ju­ly 2015, which end­ed in the deaths of a po­lice of­fi­cer and two of the es­capees, CCTV cam­eras and full-body scan­ners were in­stalled at the Gold­en Grove, Port-of-Spain, Re­mand and Max­i­mum-Se­cu­ri­ty Pris­ons.

How­ev­er, those up­grades to sur­veil­lance tech­nol­o­gy, com­bined with the grab­bers and jam­mers pro­cured to stop unau­tho­rised phone calls by in­mates, are be­ing short­cir­cuit­ed by crim­i­nal­ly-aligned of­fi­cers. They have giv­en the ad­van­tage to high-risk pris­on­ers who much too eas­i­ly, right from their prison cells, or­der hits on prison of­fi­cers and oth­ers they re­gard as threats to their un­der­world en­ter­pris­es.

In­car­cer­at­ed gang lead­ers are get­ting more brazen and are now send­ing death threats and com­pil­ing hit lists, try­ing to use mur­der as a bar­gain­ing tool.

Heav­en help us all if they get their way!

Yet, con­ver­sa­tions about all the ills in T&T’s pris­ons bare­ly ever touch on the ram­pant cor­rup­tion or com­plic­i­ty with the crim­i­nal un­der­world by of­fi­cers through­out the prison sys­tem.

Blood is on the hands of all the of­fi­cers who have aligned with the crim­i­nals. They are to blame for the slaugh­ter of their col­leagues as much as the hit­men dis­patched by jailed gang lead­ers who have, in just the past few days, left two fam­i­lies in mourn­ing and se­vere­ly trau­ma­tised a three-year-old girl.

There are many ills with­in the prison sys­tem that need to be ad­dressed. How­ev­er, to end the blood­shed, the au­thor­i­ties must deal swift­ly and se­vere­ly with rogue prison of­fi­cers.

That too should be giv­en the high­est pri­or­i­ty.