Tyrone Reid, Enterprise Reporter

Information from the Department of Correctional Services has revealed that prisoners are still armed and dangerous, while living fabulously behind bars at the expense of taxpayers.

As a result, a senior official from the Caribbean Search Centre, the unit responsible for searching the prisons, is calling for an overhaul of the measures employed by the Correctional Services to keep contraband out of the country's penal institutions.

"The checks and balances need to be revisited at the Correctional Services," Captain Ezra Bignall, deputy director at the Caribbean Search Centre told The Sunday Gleaner last week.

Captain Bignall added that the volume of contraband recovered from the prisons by members of the Caribbean Search Centre "is indeed alarming."

"I do know that it is a problem, as we are constantly finding stuff. Nine out of 10 searches turn up with some find or the other," Captain Bignall said.

The statistics indicate that security measures implemented by the Department of Correctional Services to keep out contraband are breached continuously by witty convicts and their cronies. Major Richard Reese, Commissioner of Corrections, who manages the daily operations of the island's penal institutions, admitted that the trafficking of contraband has his administration on its heels.

CHALLENGE

"Currently, I will say that the department's challenge now is one where you have trafficking in contraband," Major Reese said.

Deadly weapons and appliances as big as 14-inch television sets are smuggled into the island's penal institutions, some of which claim to be maximum security facilities that house some of the nation's most callous criminals.

Between 2003 and 2005, more than half a million dollars, close to 100 hot plates, 15 televisions, 18 DVD players and other luxury items, including cameras and tape recorders, have been confiscated from prisoners after searches conducted in six of the island's seven penal institutions.

In addition to the luxurious appliances, hundreds of deadly weapons were also recovered.

A total of 729 weapons, including ratchet knives, jammers, machetes and hacksaw blades, were also confiscated during the period.

The Sunday Gleaner was unable to ascertain how 15 television sets, some of them all of 14 inches, got past officers, who are trained to detect contraband.

MOUNTAINOUS TASK

However, the representative of a major appliance store said that size and security would make it a mountainous task for a would-be thief to steal a 14-inch television set from one of her company's stores.

"I don't think it would be easy because of the size and it is not a flat surface that can be easily attached to the body," she explained.

The representative also gave an indication of the cost of some of these appliances. A one-burner hot plate - $1,047; the 14-inch television set ranges from $9,319 to $10,484; DVD players range from $4,659 to $22,134.

Along with the sizeable appliances making it past the check points, in excess of 15,000 'balls' and some 16 'parcels' (with at least 13 of them weighing half pound) of vegetable matter found their way into the nation's penal institutions.

The population of the prisons in Jamaica has averaged more than 4,000 between 2002 and 2005.

Some three years ago, the Government spent millions of dollars installing equipment to jam cellular phone calls between prisoners and their cronies and/or dependants on the outside. In fact, the jammers provoked complaints from residents in the immediate vicinity of the prison that their phone calls were affected by the electronic jamming.

However, the Government's multimillion-dollar gadget has not deterred the prisoners, as more than 1,000 cellular phones were recovered, plus close to 750 chargers and almost 150 earpieces.