RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

As the Gov­ern­ment in­ten­si­fies its fight against crime through State of Emer­gency mea­sures, polic­ing strate­gies and leg­isla­tive re­form, one of the coun­try’s most crit­i­cal crime-gen­er­at­ing en­vi­ron­ments—the prison sys­tem—con­tin­ues to op­er­ate un­der se­vere strain. Ex­perts warn that with­out ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion, it risks fu­elling the very crim­i­nal­i­ty au­thor­i­ties are try­ing to con­tain.

Af­ter three decades in the prison ser­vice, for­mer Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ra­jku­mar Ram­roop is again call­ing for sweep­ing re­forms to over­haul Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cor­rec­tion­al sys­tem. He has long warned that pris­ons are evolv­ing in­to “com­mand cen­tres” for crime rather than in­sti­tu­tions of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.