POA: No more Remand inmates for MSP

At a news conference yesterday on the grounds of the Maximum Security Prison, the association said that there are about two Remand prisoners to each convicted prisoner at the Maximum Security Prison and the Remand inmates are destroying the facility because it was not designed to handle Remand prisoners. The association’s Public Relations Officer, Burton Hill said the transfers began earlier this year as a way of easing the overcrowding at the Remand Yard and have continued to the extent that it has become very difficult for the officers to manage the prison. He said gates, light fixtures and other facilities are being destroyed by the inmates transferred from Remand Yard. Hill said that the Remand inmates are harder to control because they have been in the prison for long periods and are have become frustrated because of the delays in their trials, while the convicted prisoners do not give as much trouble because they are serving a definite term and know when they will be released.

President of the Association, Ceron Richards, criticised the Government for failing to deal promptly with the problems affecting prisons officers, especially its failure to react to the deaths of prisons officers. Richards said he had a list of complaints which the Government had refused to address.

“They are talking about stiff penalties for persons who threaten prisons officers or by extension law enforcement officers, so you are talking about a deterrant.

Then there is the protection part and the protection part will involve the issuing of security mechanisms to protect the officer.

We don’t have to elaborate on that. So it is a multi-faceted approach to deal with the whole issue of officer safety and security.” Richards said the association will take instruction from its members and will do what is “absolutely necessary” to deal with the issues. “It is unreasonable for the employer not to provide a safe place of work, a safe system of work and not to exercise their duty of care to treat with the issues the officers have, bearing in mind that these issues will affect the officers in performing their mandate, which is the prison’s mandate, so it will affect the society.”