Why no action on prison population?

As early as April 2020, Government promised to release eligible prisoners from crowded prisons to mitigate the spread of covid19.

That followed a riot at Golden Grove prison in March, sparked by fears of infection.

Criteria were set out in an application to the court by Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi which identified those in the system sentenced to less than one year, were serving default sentences because they could not pay fines, couldn’t access bail, were eligible to have their sentences commuted or who were entitled to remission.

There would be no reprieve for anyone on gang charges, held for firearm possession or charged with murder, drug trafficking, kidnapping, sexual offences or kidnapping. It was, overall, a sensible and well-considered leavening of the crowded halls of incarceration, filtering out those least likely to pose a threat to society while making it possible to manage the prison system more efficiently and safely.

Except that it didn’t happen.

In April, a list of 139 inmates was sent to National Security Minister Stuart Young for early-release consideration out of a list of 957 prisoners considered eligible for the programme. According to the World Prison Brief, in September 2018, the prison population of TT was 3,999, more than half of whom are in pre-trial or remand. Between November and December, the AG publicly insisted that hundreds of inmates had been released.

The Prisons Officers Association said the AG had been misled. Commissioner of Prisons Dennis Pulchan did not comment.

Dr Wayne Kublalsingh, who has refocused his activism on prison reform, said on Friday that in a conversation he had with Commissioner Pulchan two weeks ago, 700 inmates who were either aged, non-abusive or peaceful were identified as available for early release.

That’s probably a list that has been around since the conversation about prison population reduction began, yet it never seems to have come to the actionable attention of either the AG or the National Security Minister.

The AG is clearly enthusiastic about the project, but there must be real-world action on this matter and some clarity about where the bottlenecks lie.

The Judiciary was challenged before covid19 restrictions, so it’s possible that processing hundreds of documents necessary to release prisoners might be an issue.

It’s also possible that the prisoners are unprepared to act effectively to secure their own release. Has there been an effort to get the Legal Aid Advisory Authority involved in this process?

Clearly it’s not enough to just make a list and present it to the judicial system.

The missing next steps need to be identified and managed and then acted on to move a good idea to practical reality.