Trinidad and Tobago’s government is moving forward with a plan to bring back court-ordered hard labour for convicted offenders, deploying incarcerated people to public space maintenance and clean-up initiatives across the country, Homeland Security Minister Roger Alexander announced last week.
Alexander shared the details during a press interaction at a meeting for the National Programme for the Upkeep of Public Spaces, held at the St John’s Community Centre in Tunapuna. Standing alongside active participants in the national public upkeep programme, he confirmed that the policy would eventually place sentenced inmates into similar community-focused projects as a core component of their court-mandated sentences.
“We are going to reintroduce (a programme) where persons who have been charged, convicted by a court, and sentenced to hard labour, we are going to reintroduce those persons to come back out into the streets and help with the clean-up process,” Alexander told reporters. He argued that the current implementation of hard labour sentences within the national prison system fails to live up to the core intent of the sentencing.
He pointed out that today, offenders sentenced to hard labour often spend most of their time confined to cells, with access to personal devices and internet connectivity – conditions that do not align with the purpose of a tough, rehabilitative work sentence. “If you are convicted, 12 months or two years’ hard labour, whatever…what does hard labour in the jail do? A man just sitting in a cell. A man is smoking, on his phone, on the Internet and all these things. That is not hard labour. That is not hard work,” he said.
Beyond correcting how sentences are carried out, Alexander framed the new policy as a tool for early inmate rehabilitation and reintegration. Offenders who demonstrate strong work ethic can start rebuilding public trust before their release, he explained, allowing community members to see their commitment to change. “If someone is smart on the inside, he can use this process to start to reintegrate himself into the public. Let the public see (him and say), ‘listen, that fella is hard-working,’” he added.
The minister also noted that the policy model has already been tested and proven successful in other jurisdictions, and that the national prison system represents one of the country’s largest underutilized labor pools that the government is prepared to tap for public benefit. “We have one of the biggest labour forces at the nation’s prisons, and we are ready to utilise them,” he said.
While the Prison Officers’ Association of Trinidad and Tobago (POATT) has called the proposal a positive step in principle, association head Gerard Gordon emphasized that a number of critical safety and operational concerns must be addressed before the programme can be expanded to public projects outside prison walls.
Gordon noted that meaningful work has long been accepted as a core element of effective offender rehabilitation, helping incarcerated people build job skills, develop personal discipline, and prepare for a successful return to society after release. “The Minister of Homeland Security’s proposal to expand inmate participation in public maintenance is, in principle, a laudable one,” Gordon said. “Meaningful work has long been recognised as an important component of rehabilitation, helping incarcerated individuals develop skills, instil discipline, and prepare for successful reintegration into society.”
Currently, the Prison Service already runs a range of work programmes for eligible inmates, who must meet strict screening and qualification requirements before being assigned to duties. Before any inmate can be approved for work placement, they must undergo a full medical evaluation to confirm fitness, complete an initial portion of their sentence, and pass a comprehensive risk assessment that evaluates escape risk, gang affiliations, criminal connections, past behavioural records, and overall public threat level.
Approved inmates currently work in on-site prison roles including food service, facility construction and maintenance, vehicle repair at the prison garage, garment production at the in-house tailor shop, agricultural crop production, and care for the prison service’s livestock. “These programmes already provide valuable vocational training while supporting the daily operations of our correctional facilities,” Gordon explained.
Gordon stressed that supervising inmate work crews outside of secured correctional facilities requires a specialized force of trained correctional officers, with the specific skills, experience and resources needed to maintain security, manage inmate behaviour, and respond rapidly to any potential emergency. Public safety, he added, must be the non-negotiable top priority, and cannot be compromised for program expansion.
Reaffirming the Prison Service’s long-standing commitment to rehabilitation and constructive engagement for incarcerated people, Gordon noted that any expansion of inmate work programmes must be rooted in rigorous risk assessment and evidence-based correctional practices. “Every decision regarding inmate employment, whether inside or outside correctional facilities, must be guided first and foremost by comprehensive risk assessment, sound correctional practice, and the overriding responsibility to protect the public,” he said.