Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: The best insight, constant feedback, accountability. The all new talk radio freedom 106.5. Good morning, Devi, and good morning to your listeners.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Good morning, good morning and welcome back to the offices and the studio of Freedom 106.5 FM. How are you feeling this morning?
[00:00:18] Speaker A: I'm feeling great.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: All right, so as a former prison liaison and a president of the Prison Officers association, we talking some of the things that's taking place in the prison.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: All right, let's pull the mic.
[00:00:29] Speaker C: Right?
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Yeah. In front of you, right. We're talking about the things in the prison and I know you would send me a lot of correspondence during the morning and during the day and we talk regularly. You know, what are some of the latest developments? I saw an article that came, I think was in 2010, they was asking for a prison facility in central Trinidad.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I remember back then because of the normal problem that we have severe overcrowding, high remand population, we have gang violence inside the prison and short staffing.
There was a call for facility in the county, central area in South Trinidad, wherever it is that the government at the time would be able to have that facility to deal with the situation that we currently have, even at present overcrowding. There was even a call for, for the closure of Carrera Convict prison and that never took place. Now there's a call for the closure of Port of Spain Prison. So certainly there's need for a population, a prison population away from the city life so that you can accommodate everything. And that facility needs to have proper infrastructure in place to accommodate remands, remandees. You're talking about prison reform, prison programs, proper rehabilitation, exercise to take place. Because this is one of the areas that we've been failing and continue to have a high recidivism rate. So if we do not deal with those issues and address a prison complex in that sense, rather than having eight, nine facilities throughout Trinidad and Tobago, we could have one or two large facilities like the maximum security prison. And this new facility I understand that the government is speaking of.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: So they're looking at it in terms of constructing a prison facility, a multi leveled facility, or is it going to be a compound where it's maybe two story buildings, but multiple buildings. I did some research in other parts of the world where state of the art correctional facilities. There's a large area, but there's housing unit A, housing unit B, high risk, most dangerous prisoners and they have different sections.
But I don't know if we have the real estate in Trinidad for it. So I'M thinking a couple buildings on the compound, but multi storied, I don't know.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: No, but that facility that the government has earmarked in Komoto, that could, the infrastructure could be stretched across and that you could accommodate. But whoever is dealing with it must understand how a prison infrastructure goes along in terms of what actually happens, the different facilities. Sometimes we have persons who could be in charge of it and they don't understand the concept of how prison operates because there are areas. And in terms of the flow, the flow of how programs, for example you have the remand is what do you have in place? What would you have in place? How you structure the remand population, how you structure the convicted section in terms of the inmates flowing system.
You need to look at the security aspect of it.
How do you actually manage the whole area? Then you're talking about, let's say the rehab programs. In terms of agriculture, whatever facilities that the government is going to seek to implement, there must be that infrastructure layout of how you actually dealt with. I visited several prisons in the US and even in the Caribbean and you would have seen a layout of how it is in the Caribbean you do not have the big accommodation for large Spanish to deal with that type of infrastructure. But in the US I remember visiting, you actually see an area where the officers do not enter the prison with their personal belongings. There are dormitories outside of the prison itself and everyone is scanned and searched going into the prison. So it must have that kind of consideration in terms of if you're looking at infrastructure, are we still having a.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: Challenge with officers not being searched when entering the prisons?
[00:05:02] Speaker A: Yeah, you continue to have that issue that you'll have some of the officers find innovative ways. For example, at Golden Grove they are scanning facilities that enter into the prison.
And recently there was an exercise conducted by the police and the prison. And in the women's prison you had contraband being found. How did that come in? Davy?
[00:05:28] Speaker B: If you. Yeah, that happened recently. Right.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: So if we, we have that facility to enter the prison but then you, you still find innovative ways of things getting inside of it. So I had outlined way back that there is a, a process in terms of how you deal with on a daily basis and every area and aspect of the operations of the prison. In terms of eradicating contraband issue, at.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: What level do we stop search prison officers when they're coming to work? So we starting from a. I don't know the different ranks, if it's an officer, one, two, I don't know.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Right so I remember back in 2010, now some of them say, well, you're talking about. But that was the time when, when I was there and 2010, there was an issue of the commissioner of prison did not want his senior rank to be to be searched. And we found certain ranks that we knew who were bringing contraband. And there was that issue. And the minister back then, John Sandy, he would have said every rank to be searched. And after, after that period it went back to normal that not everybody is being searched. And so what you're saying, you. You are different. You are the senior rank DAV And I am the junior rank. Are you better than me? Do you have integrity? That means that you will not be bringing contraband inside of the prison. And there are allegations of other persons who are brought in contraband.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: The thing about it is people talk about background checks. And you can chime in on the conversation very quickly if you wish. 625-2257 and 6273223. I saw a call was coming just now. You can call me back if you so desire. The thing for me is this person. Circumstances change. So entering the prison service, doing your exams, getting through, becoming a prison officer after you're training and you are deployed, when you get into the actual working environment and you realize where you're being threatened, maybe you take out one or two loans. I'm just saying. And you're now being paid to do this, it reaches a stage where you become compromised.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: So maybe as a junior they couldn't search you. But as a senior you realize, well look, I could eat our food as we just say, or make money on this. And you decide to go down that wrong road before you answer. Hello. Good morning.
[00:07:41] Speaker C: Good morning, Mr. Devi.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: Good morning.
[00:07:43] Speaker C: And to your guest, Mr. Rajkumar.
Mr. Rajkumar, I would like to hear your thoughts, your views on the reality that while Trinidad and Tobago and many countries their prison services and systems have to be expanded exponentially to meet with the requirements and the demands of high crime.
There are countries and and nations in the world where some prisons have been reduced. In fact, I think it's in Denmark. Some time ago they had to close down the prison system because of a shortage of prisoners.
How do you rationalize this reality? Thank you, Princess Tong.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: But just to answer, Princess Tong, understand that situation. In Denmark, there are other countries too where there are different types of prisons. In India you have a prison where people go to the stay at the prison at night. And during the day they go to the workplaces.
In terms of the Type of program, the social environment, different cultures facilitate different types of prison settings. So while Denmark has that and because of the social network, the social support programs that they have that employs people so that the prison population is not as high, is not as what you'll find in other countries. So certainly there are areas that need to focus in terms of how we deal with the prison itself.
[00:09:19] Speaker B: The thing about it is the low prison having to close down prison facilities. The difference with prisons in the US and other countries, is it solely run by government or is it that they have a governor? You know, something was, I was looking at it and it didn't seem as though it was run by the state holding solely, it had private interest partners because they wanted persons to come into the prison system. Could I hold us making money or something to that?
[00:09:45] Speaker A: Right, so what you have Davy, is that some of the prisons are semi, semi, semi privatized.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: Good morning.
[00:09:51] Speaker C: Good morning gentlemen. Robustra is here.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: Morning.
[00:09:55] Speaker C: I have a kind of funny feeling that we are not making use of the technology to keep prisoners monitored and you know, remand and those that that could be let out for, you know, someone goes to prison for not paying maintenance and so on.
Whereas you could easily put a anklet on them and let them go and work and help support their child. You know, little traffic this and that. People could go to work, they have this anklet, they report to these stations. I have a feeling that we just locking up people that really don't need to be locked up. And we are building expensive prisons and then we are telling the population it's so much to keep a prisoner when a lot of the them could simply be out there because they're really no risk to anybody. And it's a graduated scale, of course. Judicial officers will have to determine who it stays in and who goes out and how you change that and how you monitor it and so on. But we are not using the technology. We are building these huge. Well, we intend to and just keep people locked up and then we say the system is overwhelmed and so on.
But we are not using the technology appropriately. I want to get your comment on that, sir. Thank you.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Yeah, well, we have introduced the electronic monitoring in 2012, the government had introduced the electronic monitoring bill and subsequent times you had where it actually came on stream. So we actually have that, that is used for a certain class of prisoners. But yes, it could be expanded. It would require staffing, it requires more resources being deployed in that particular area. And yes, there are other technologies that we could use effectively in terms of, let's say case management.
The infrastructure must go in hand in hand with case management.
So there are some areas that we could use the technology to actually deal with those kinds of issues. And I agree with you.
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