Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons (Ag), Den­nis Pul­chan, is re­it­er­at­ing his and his team’s de­ter­mi­na­tion and com­mit­ment to en­sur­ing prop­er man­age­ment and mit­i­ga­tion of the spread of COVID-19 among the prison pop­u­la­tion—in­clu­sive of staff mem­bers, prison of­fi­cers and in­mates—as far as hu­man­ly pos­si­ble.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued this morn­ing, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice re­sponds to a video cur­rent­ly cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia, in which pris­on­ers re­port­ed­ly are mak­ing claims of ne­glect.

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, the Prison Ser­vice has im­ple­ment­ed sev­er­al mea­sures to curb COVID’s spread, notwith­stand­ing their ma­jor chal­lenges of over­crowd­ing and space con­straints.

“Pris­on­ers who have been test­ed, and those sub­se­quent­ly re­turn­ing pos­i­tive re­sults for COVID-19, are im­me­di­ate­ly sep­a­rat­ed from the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion,” the state­ment as­serts.

The Prison Ser­vice al­so points out that on­ly those pris­on­ers who pos­sess co­mor­bidi­ties or have un­der­ly­ing med­ical con­di­tions are sent to pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties.

In ad­di­tion, the re­lease ex­plains:

“Due to the large num­ber of per­sons re­turn­ing pos­i­tive re­sults at the same time, and with a view to pre­vent the spread of the virus, the pris­on­ers have been kept at the Max­i­mum-Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, housed sep­a­rate and apart from the pop­u­la­tion.”

It added: “We con­tin­ue to be guid­ed by the ex­pert ad­vice of the Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fice of Health, St. George East, and the im­por­tance and prac­ti­cal­i­ty of keep­ing the clus­ter to­geth­er was im­pressed up­on, in an ef­fort to con­tain the virus to the par­tic­u­lar lo­ca­tion.”

Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons, Den­nis Pul­chan, ob­serves that with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3,800 pris­on­ers un­der its care, the man­age­ment of COVID-19 with­in the prison has been man­aged ef­fec­tive­ly, thus far.

“All ef­forts and re­sources are be­ing uti­lized with a view to pro­tect all staff mem­bers, per­sons un­der our charge and by ex­ten­sion, mem­bers of the pub­lic,” he as­sures.