Members of the media along with officials of the Bahamas Department of Corrections and the Ministry of National Security toured the facilities of the Department of Corrections which is getting an overhaul.
Renovation of the Remand Center are being carried out at an estimated cost of $2 million, $80,000 of the work has been completed.
Minister of National Security, the Hon. Wayne Munroe was part of the touring delegation. He spoke of the building of a new prison that will aid in intercepting contraband among other things. “We set about setting up a facility that rules out the ability for that to happen, that has singular assess points, that has the ability to have a comprehensive camera system installed. We hope to weed out and eliminate that type of bahaviour or certainly reduce it.”
Acting Commissioner of the Bahamas Department of Corrections, Don Cleare, was also on hand and spoke to damage to the facility cause by inmate behaviour. He said, “with inmates smoking cigarettes or any illegal contrabands and officers are doing their tour, they would have take that lighted contraband and just drop it into the toilet top and it goes to the pipes and hence you have the pipes burning on the bottom floor.”
Cleare also expounded on the new juvenile facility under construction. “Spent well over $100,000 in remodeling thus far. The inmates are doing the work along with officers and this facility can house comfortably 25 inmates. Of our juvenile population normally who is around 14 or 15 inmates a year. This facility will be self contained. The staffing for this facility will be probably trained by American Correctional Association.”
