For­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Gary Grif­fith is warn­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) leg­is­la­tion gives too much unchecked pow­er to the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and could be abused by fu­ture gov­ern­ments.

In a state­ment on Mon­day, Grif­fith said his con­cerns were not di­rect­ed at the cur­rent hold­er of the of­fice or any re­cent de­ci­sion in­volv­ing the use of a PDO, but at what he de­scribed as a fun­da­men­tal flaw in the leg­is­la­tion.

He ar­gued that the law al­lows a min­is­ter to au­tho­rise the de­ten­tion of a per­son for months with­out bail or any mean­ing­ful right of ap­peal based on what the min­is­ter con­sid­ers to be “cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence”, even where there is in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to lay crim­i­nal charges.