SoE's impact on prisons

The Police Service may boast of an increase in arrests since the state of emergency was declared, but prison officers are worried.

Detainees held during the SoE are expected to be housed at designated detention centres, which include the Carrera Convict Prison, the Women's Prison, the Remand Prison at Golden Grove, and the Eastern Correctional Rehabilitation Centre.

But Gerard Gordon, president of the Prison Officers Association, has raised concerns about the condition of prison facilities, which he described as "under-resourced, overburdened, and littered with infrastructural deficiencies."

The Police Commissioner highlighted 126 people arrested in the first five days of the SoE, declared on December 30.

On January 10, Deputy Police Commissioner Junior Benjamin revised the number of arrests to closer to 500 suspects and the police have targeted 585 "priority offenders" for their operations.

The police’s "all-hands-on-deck" approach, which includes officers recalled from leave, led to 562 operations; 2,096 searches, and the seizure of 30 firearms, 937 rounds of ammunition, and 106 kilogrammes of marijuana.

After 416 traffic operations, 179 traffic offences were identified.

These are impressive numbers, though this temporary, albeit sustained, offensive on identified criminals is only likely to drive them underground and make new operations less successful.

Criminals can wait out this spirited effort by police, and the only people likely to be worried about this policing surge are honest citizens who are entitled to be concerned about over-enthusiastic, well-armed officers.

Mr Gordon is right to worry about the increased number of detainees given the strained situation in the nation's correctional institutions.

This should have come as no surprise to the government. When the People's Partnership declared a crime-related state of emergency in 2011, 7,000 people were arrested over the three months the 2011 SoE was in effect.

International human rights organisations that observed the effect on the prison system were unequivocal about calling the conditions of local incarceration inhumane.

That policing action was tainted first by accusations of police brutality inflicted on prisoners and then by the release of almost all the detainees, which rendered the exercise pointless.

So much about this sudden declaration of a SoE continues to be poorly thought through and executed.

A gun amnesty codicil in the Emergency Powers Regulations has not been brought into force, and it's unclear whether any actual process for managing such a procedure even exists.

Prison officials are also concerned that with increased incarceration of gang suspects, existing efforts to separate them may prove inadequate. On January 10, the association warned its members of elevated threat levels.

Decades of poor management and indifferent commitment to repair and improve prison facilities have left TT in the same position it was in during the 2011 SoE.