The management of the Guyana Prison Service considered a number of measures to upgrade the prisons and had a lengthy discussion on stamping out the smuggling of prohibited items.
According to a press release from the Ministry of Home Affairs, the participants also discussed issues such as Cor-rectional Measures, Prison Rehabilitation Programmes, Welfare Issues, Custodial and Non-Custodial Capacity Constraints, Recruitment and Training, Strategic and Succession Planning and Prison Enter-prise Development at a retreat held on Saturday.
They also deliberated on the application of appropriate technology for the all-round development of the prison. The meeting then agreed to establish an Agriculture Development Board to oversee the growth and development of the agriculture sector of the prison service.
The meeting also examined ways to curb the smuggling/trafficking of prohibited items such as cellular phones and deliberated on the status of trade shops at the respective prisons locations as a means of providing skills training as part of the Prisoners Rehabilitation Pro-gramme.
The ministry had equipped the trade shops with a number of tools to execute this programme. “It is envisaged that the Trade Shops will eventually evolve to be engines of a vibrant Prisons’ Enterprise Development programme,” the release said. In keeping with this, Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee challenged the prison service to “consider moving [its service] closer to a correctional service.”
Additionally, officers at each prisons location identified their challenges and proposed a number of ways to resolve them. The minister also noted that certain deficiencies will have to be addressed at the policy level, the management level and at the individual level.
