Santa Rosa venue to quarantine new inmates

In an attempt to monitor and prevent coronavirus spread behind bars, the prison’s Eastern Correctional Rehabilitation Centre (ECRC), in Santa Rosa Heights, Arima, has been designated a quarantine station to monitor and treat new inmates entering the prison system.

Speaking with Newsday on Thursday, Prisons Commissioner Dennis Pulchan said while there have been no suspected cases of the coronavirus among inmates or prison officers so far, the prison service was taking no chances. He added that the prisons have adopted increased precaution to avoid infection.

Among these measures is the transformation of the ECRC as a quarantine station for new inmates.

“Before the covid19 began in TT, we had a rigorous covid19 policy,” Pulchan stated. “Now we have transformed the Eastern Correctional Rehabilitation Centre to a quarantine station where all inmates coming into the prison system are examined, kept in isolation for 14 days and examined again by a doctor from which they are sent to the other prison based on risk analysis, which is how at-risk they are of being infected.”

Pulchan said the facility was inspected by officials from the regional health authorities and were within the Ministry of Health’s established guidelines. He also said the centre was regularly sanitised, and he thanked corporate sponsors for donating hand sanitisers and personal protective equipment to the prisons.

Pulchan clarified reports that 121 inmates were released when their sentences were reduced due to good behaviour and not due to proposed measures to reduce overcrowding in the prisons. He said the prison service were still awaiting permission from the court to release the inmates.

Asked whether recently released inmates would be monitored by the authorities, Pulchan said the prison service had no jurisdiction in keeping watch of inmates once they left the prison.