分类： politics

Former top Trinidad and Tobago law enforcement official Gary Griffith has publicly thrown his support behind a controversial new government policy that would mandate all individuals aged 16 and older to carry official state-issued identification when in public spaces. In an interview with local outlet the Express, Griffith argued that the regulatory change would strengthen police capabilities without creating unreasonable disruptions to everyday civilian life, even as he acknowledged the intense public backlash the plan has already drawn.

Griffith recognized that many critics have framed the proposed mandate as an overreach of state power, with opponents warning it could lay the groundwork for authoritarian policing practices and the expansion of a police state. But he pushed back against these claims, noting that comparable mandatory ID laws are already in place across a wide range of sovereign nations, where they have become a standard, accepted tool for practical, effective policing.

Contrary to widespread fears that the policy would lead to a surge in unnecessary arrests of ordinary citizens, Griffith emphasized that the core purpose of the rule is not to target innocent members of the public, but to provide law enforcement officers with a consistent, reliable mechanism to confirm people’s identities during routine and critical operations. This includes during criminal investigations, fixed roadblocks, and other emergency or law enforcement scenarios.

He outlined several key practical benefits that the mandate would deliver. With mandatory ID checks, officers can efficiently confirm the identities of potential witnesses to crimes, follow up on leads by locating persons of interest, and cross-reference individual details against active law enforcement databases to check for outstanding warrants or wanted status. The policy would also create a formal process to verify whether individuals are residing in Trinidad and Tobago with legal immigration status.

“Right now, police can check centralized databases to confirm definitively if a person is wanted by the law or has active warrants pending against them. That’s why this direction carries so much value for public safety,” Griffith explained.

Illegal immigration, a longstanding policy challenge for the Caribbean nation, is another key reason Griffith cites to support the proposal. Drawing on his own experience serving as the country’s national security minister, he shared that official data from his tenure showed more than 110,000 individuals who entered the country through legal ports of entry never officially departed, putting them in undocumented immigration status. Griffith added that this figure does not include the unknown number of people who entered the country through unregulated, illegal border crossings, meaning the full scope of the undocumented population remains unclear today.

“If that large undocumented population remains unaddressed, this mandatory ID policy gives law enforcement a clear way to distinguish between people who are in the country legally and those who are not, ensuring officers have a verifiable, factual way to confirm who they are interacting with, rather than relying on self-reported information,” he said.

Griffith also moved to directly address one of the most common public concerns surrounding the policy: the fear that ordinary civilians will be detained or arrested simply for forgetting to carry their identification on their person. He noted that based on current public details of the proposal, the policy does not include an automatic arrest or overnight detention for individuals without ID on hand.

Recognizing that forgetting ID at home is a common, innocent mistake, Griffith said individuals in that situation should be permitted to leave the scene and return at a later date to produce the required identification for verification. He also urged the public to avoid premature criticism of the plan, noting that the national Cabinet almost certainly conducted rigorous research and impact assessments before advancing the proposal.

“Before people rush to jump to conclusions about this policy, it’s important to recognize that the Cabinet has almost certainly completed detailed research to assess whether this measure will deliver real value to help law enforcement agencies carry out their public safety duties more effectively,” Griffith said.

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.

A bold social media appeal from Diego Martin’s top local official has ignited a fiery public exchange over long-deferred road repairs, pushing long-simmering infrastructure grievances into the national spotlight. On Wednesday, Akeliah Glasgow-Warner, mayor of the Diego Martin Borough, took to Facebook to share a viral video pleading for urgent intervention from Trinidad and Tobago’s Minister of Works Jearlean John, opening her clip with a playful nod to the leopard-print skirt she wore specifically to cut through social media noise and draw attention to the crisis plaguing local motorists.

Walking alongside cracked, pothole-ridden streets and pointing out dangerous damage to road surfaces, Glasgow-Warner pushed back against widespread public blame that had fallen on the Diego Martin Borough Corporation (DMBC) for the unresolved issues. She clarified that major highway and arterial road infrastructure, including stretches of the Diego Martin Highway at the center of complaints, falls under the jurisdiction of the national Ministry of Works, not the local borough government. Compounding the challenge, she explained, drastic cuts to local government funding have left the DMBC without the resources to step in even if leaders wanted to address the gaps: each of the borough’s councillors receives just TT$50,000 annually for all district maintenance projects, an amount Glasgow-Warner called insufficient to cover even minor repairs, let alone the years of systemic neglect she says the national ministry has allowed.

“This is not about political points for me. This is about the drivers, the residents who navigate these roads every single day,” Glasgow-Warner emphasized in her video, closing with a direct appeal to John to end the neglect of the Diego Martin area and deploy ministry crews to complete the required repairs.

The minister’s office fired back quickly, rejecting Glasgow-Warner’s accusations as unfounded and shifting blame to the previous national administration, which was led by former Prime Minister Keith Rowley, who also served as the Member of Parliament for Diego Martin for nearly a decade. In a formal statement released through the Ministry of Works and Infrastructure’s (MOWI) communications team, John called the mayor’s claims baseless, noting that the crumbling road surfaces and persistent underground leaks damaging the Diego Martin and St Lucien Roads stem from decades of neglected aging infrastructure that predates her leadership of the ministry.

John countered that unlike the previous administration, which she claims left the area’s basic infrastructure to rot, her current government has prioritized resolving long-backlogged repair projects. She said MOWI has been working in continuous coordination with the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) to map and address leak-related road damage across the country, and confirmed that targeted repair work on Diego Martin’s damaged roads was scheduled to get underway on Thursday, just one day after the mayor’s viral video was posted. “This neglect did not start under my watch, but unlike those who sat back and did nothing for years, this Government is not just talking…we are working!” John’s statement read.

The exchange comes as local governments across Trinidad and Tobago grapple with strained budgets, leaving many unable to address infrastructure projects that technically fall under national jurisdiction, while national agencies often point to limited resources and years of backlog to explain delayed repairs. The viral video has resonated with motorists across the country, many of whom have shared their own stories of dangerous pothole-ridden roads in their own communities.