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Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der has con­firmed the Port of Spain Prison will be de­com­mis­sioned, de­scrib­ing the move as “a his­toric de­ci­sion” that ends 268 years of op­er­a­tions at the fa­cil­i­ty.

He said the prison, built in 1757, has long been con­demned by the courts as un­fit for hous­ing in­mates. Alexan­der said the gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed it made no sense to con­tin­ue pay­ing mil­lions in com­pen­sa­tion to pris­on­ers for breach­es of their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

“This fa­cil­i­ty is an eye­sore. When you come in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go and you go to the city, peo­ple take you to the prison, they of­ten ask you, you have per­sons in there? And the an­swer is yes. Rather than con­tin­u­ing pay­ing com­pen­sa­tion to pris­on­ers for breach of their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights by hous­ing them in fa­cil­i­ties that are sub-hu­man and de­grad­ing, the gov­ern­ment will save mon­ey and in­vest in­stead in a state-of-the-art prison fa­cil­i­ty mod­ernised to as­sist in re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and restora­tive jus­tice,” Alexan­der said at the post-Cab­i­net brief­ing.