Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don has again called for the im­me­di­ate clo­sure of the Port-of-Spain Prison and Car­rera Is­land Con­vict Prison, say­ing the cen­tu­ry-old in­sti­tu­tions are no longer fit for pur­pose and con­tin­ue to place strain on both prison staff and the pub­lic.

In a strong­ly word­ed state­ment ti­tled Time to Shut the Gates on the Past, Gor­don said the fa­cil­i­ties be­long to a dif­fer­ent era and are in­ca­pable of sup­port­ing a mod­ern cor­rec­tion­al sys­tem.

“Every year, mil­lions are spent try­ing to keep these fa­cil­i­ties op­er­a­tional, even though their phys­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions make it im­pos­si­ble to de­liv­er mod­ern cor­rec­tion­al ser­vices ef­fec­tive­ly. These are costs the State can­not con­tin­ue to ab­sorb when bet­ter so­lu­tions ex­ist,” he said.