For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith has thrown his sup­port be­hind the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to de­com­mis­sion the his­toric Port-of-Spain Prison, de­scrib­ing it as a long over­due step in the right di­rec­tion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Grif­fith, who served on the 2013 Spe­cial Pris­ons Com­mit­tee tasked with re­view­ing the state of the coun­try’s pe­nal fa­cil­i­ties, said the move aligned with rec­om­men­da­tions made more than a decade ago about the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing and out­dat­ed con­di­tions at the Fred­er­ick Street com­pound.

“This is a step in the right di­rec­tion, but what it will take now is to be able to build a prop­er prison to have sys­tems to en­sure we stop the prob­lems we have had for the last few years with pris­on­ers hav­ing full ac­cess to com­mu­ni­ca­tion and al­so try to find ways and means that when per­sons are in­car­cer­at­ed, they don’t come out more sea­soned and hard­ened crim­i­nals,” Grif­fith stat­ed.