A large amount of prohibited items was yesterday found in the Georgetown Prison during a search by Joint Services ranks, just over a month after a similar operation conducted there hauled in a record number of similar articles.
The Guyana Police Force in a press release yesterday informed that a search operation was conducted during the morning hours. The release said the prohibited items found were 448 grammes of narcotics, 18 cellular phones, 16 phone chargers, 39 improvised weapons, 39 lighters, 53 packs of Bristol cigarettes, 126 razor blades, 14 SIM cards and three memory cards.
During a joint services operation on November 12, 21 improvised weapons and knives, 20 razor blades, 558 grammes of marijuana, 22 cellular phones and five gallons of homemade wine, along with a number of other banned items were found. A small number of similar items was also found at the New Amsterdam Prison the same day.
In a statement announcing that discovery, the Ministry of the Presidency had said the security forces were gravely concerned by the recovery of such a large haul of contraband at the Georgetown Prison, which was only last searched just under two months earlier on September 23, 2016.
In the wake of the earlier discovery Director of Prisons (ag) Gladwin Samuels had told Stabroek News that the Guyana Prison Service had identified several possible measures, including the installation of body scanners to minimize the smuggling of items into the various prisons. He had expressed hope that the measures could be acted as the money became available.
“…The time has come for us to depend more on advanced technology and to minimize our reliance on the human factor and I am saying this because when you visit prisons across the world … [they] are very successful in terms of keeping contraband out because of the assistance given by technology, be it surveillance systems, [or]
scanners for both bags and humans,” Samuels had
told Sunday Stabroek in an interview. He had noted that the technological measures serve as a deterrent to
persons who might want to make attempts to get contraband into prisons.
In the past, prison officers have been fingered in the smuggling trade and some have been dismissed and placed before the court. In most instances the officers are charged with narcotics related offences.
Samuels had told this newspaper that the prison service had long been facing challenges as it relates to contraband being found in the prisons whenever searches are done. There are five prisons—at Georgetown, Mazaruni, Lusignan, New Amsterdam and Timehri—and searches are usually conducted by the prison service alone or in collaboration with the Joint Services.
“We have asked ourselves several times why is it that every time we do these searches we would unearth so much contraband and we have been able to answer some of those questions,” he said.
As a result, the prison administration, he pointed out, was trying to put measures in place to reduce the presence of contraband. “The more we do persons will continue to find more innovative ways in terms of getting those items into the prison,” he, added.
