(Trinidad Express) Even behind prison walls gang lords are in control of the lucrative Community-based Environmental Protection and Enhancement Programme (CEPEP) and the Unemployment Relief Programme (URP).
They are said to hire “ghost” gangs and in turn are paid part of the employees’ wages.
The employees do so either out of loyalty to the gang leaders or out of fear.
These findings are contained in Prof Selwyn Ryan’s crime report which was tabled in the House of Representatives, Tower D, International Waterfront Centre, Port of Spain, on Friday.
The gang lords are also steadily recruiting members from among the prison population, and operate an “underground economy in prisons” which consists mainly of buying and selling cocaine, marijuana, and cigarettes.
It is also said there are convicts and remandees who are “millionaires” through the operation of informal markets referred to as “parlours”.
It was also learnt that there are gangs and gang members in the prisons who operate within their own “law” and court, codes of behaviour and status systems, the report indicated.
The crime report submitted by a committee under the chairmanship of Ryan to Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said, “decisions as to who lives or dies are often determined with the Remand Yard”.
But the gang lords do not do it alone.
According to the report, “Some prison guards facilitate the operation of the networks.”
Contacted for comment yesterday chairman of CEPEP Adesh Deonarine denied his programme was being controlled by gang leaders behind prison walls.
“I think (Ryan) was focusing on URP not CEPEP. As chairman I ensure that proper checks and balances are put in place to plug all loopholes. Each contractor must also have a certificate of good character and we hold regular meetings to ensure that everything is above board.”
Deonarine admitted that all organsiations had loopholes but said paysheets were always examined to ensure there were no “ghost” employees.
He said unlike the URP the CEPEP was not engaged in rotational work and the employees were for the duration of the contract.
In reporting on the issue of prison reform in the report titled “No Time to Quit—Engaging Youth at Risk”, Dr Ryan confirmed that young black males outnumbered all other groups in the prison and as at 2010, they accounted for 51 per cent of a prison population of 2,920, while Indo-Trinidadians and others were ten per cent and “mixed” ethnicities stood at 28 per cent.
He found that most of the offenders were incarcerated for petty offences related to trafficking narcotics and that first time offenders accounted for 50 per cent of the inmates.
“Conditions in our overcrowded prisons are inhumane, degrading, and unacceptable,” Ryan said, especially so at Remand Yard where people wait to have their matters decided.
“Shocking is perhaps the only appropriate term to describe the conditions found there,” the report said, adding that it was “surprising that there are not more prisoner breakouts or suicides on a routine basis”.
He said in recent years there had been calls for prison reform, and while there was some support for restorative justice, there are those who still believe that this is the price society extracts for those who break the law.
Dr Ryan found that ganglords were not the only ones using prisoners to do their bidding.
Prisons officers were also recruiting trusted inmates to function as prisons officials or orderlies.
He found too that prisoners carried out their own punishment against other prisoners, especially for committing crimes against women and children.
He said cellphones were a big commodity inside the prisons and were “brought in by prisons officers who are on the take”, while officials also supplied drugs, and like the prisoners, officials concealed cell phones in their “vault” or “rear orifices and in food”.
Dr Ryan’s investigations suggested that stopping this practice was almost impossible.
He said there was a need to assess the roles which the Judiciary and the police played in the matter, adding that both contributed to the unacceptable conditions in the prison system, particularly in the Remand Yard.
He said the Committee met people in prison who were awaiting trial or completion of their matters for more than ten years.
