Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Dec 31, 2008 News
As prisoners continue to find more innovative ways of creating weapons in the prisons, prison officials are even more determined to bring the situation under control.
Director of Prisons, Dale Erskine, in an interview with this newspaper, said that the situation can never be completely corrected but can be minimised.
According to Erskine, while prison officials have measures in place to deal with weapons being used by prisoners, those incarcerated continue to find other means of creating weapons.
“The prison environment is a very hostile one involving people from various backgrounds and of different temperaments, so it’s a difficult situation that we have to deal with,” Erskine said.
He added that while prison officials conduct routine searches on prisoners and search the dormitories, it is still not enough to detect weapons.
He said that in most instances when there is a fight in the prisons, makeshift weapons are used.
“Sometimes we take away nails that have been sharpened and then you would find that they would sharpen the end of their tooth brushes, or a piece of wire which they would have found in the yard,” the Prison Director explained.
He said given these facts it is very difficult to detect what next the prisoners would come up with.
“We have to bear in mind that among these prisoners are pork knockers, old carpenters and old goldsmiths; people from all walks of life,” Erskine said.
To this end, he noted that Prison officials need a more holistic approach to dealing with the issue of fights among prisoners within the prison walls. He said that very often prisoners are engaged in anger management programmes and other programmes that deal with behavioral patterns.
Prisoner officials are also trained to deal with any incident that may occur within a prison dormitory among prisoners. He said in the instances where prisoners are injured during altercations, it is because many of the fights occur while the men are locked in their cells and by the time prison officials reach into the cells people would already be injured.
Erskine said that the prison administration will continue to minimise the instances of fights within the prison among prisoners.
Only recently two prisoners were hospitalised with stab wounds after they were involved in a fight in the Georgetown Prisons.
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