The Trinidad and To­ba­go prison sys­tem con­tin­ues to pour hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in­to re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes that, on pa­per, are de­signed to re­form of­fend­ers—but in prac­tice are be­ing over­whelmed by en­trenched gang cul­ture, low lit­er­a­cy lev­els, weak post-re­lease sup­port, and a sys­tem in­sid­ers claim is con­tin­u­ing to churn out crim­i­nals.

Last week, Guardian Me­dia ex­plored over­crowd­ing as a key dri­ver of re­cidi­vism, as ex­perts ar­gued that T&T pris­ons are func­tion­ing more as hold­ing fa­cil­i­ties rather than cor­rec­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions. This week, the fo­cus shifts to prison gangs and the ex­tent to which they are un­der­min­ing re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ef­forts, shap­ing in­mate be­hav­iour, and, in some cas­es, per­pet­u­at­ing cy­cles of vi­o­lence that con­tin­ue out­side the prison gates.

Last Fri­day, dur­ing the de­bate on the Pa­role Bill 2026, Jus­tice Min­is­ter and St Joseph MP De­vesh Ma­haraj said da­ta showed that more than half of peo­ple re­leased from prison go back to com­mit a crime. Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, for­mer pris­ons com­mis­sion­er Hay­den Forde said the core is­sue is not the ab­sence of pro­grammes, but the fail­ure to prop­er­ly iden­ti­fy and treat the root caus­es of crim­i­nal be­hav­iour. While some have ar­gued that lit­er­a­cy lev­els are low in prison, so pro­grammes can­not work, Forde dis­missed this ar­gu­ment.