Guyana Prison Service building prison staff capacity

DPI, GUYANA, Wednesday, February 21, 2018

In an exclusive interview with the Department of Public Information (DPI), Acting Director of Prisons, Gladwin Samuels made it known that with the budgetary allocations of 2018, the Guyana Prison Service (GPS) not only aims to build the capacity of prisoners but will also ensure that the staff are exposed to training which will promote greater efficacy within the prison service.

“We have a decent training budget for 2018 and we are making use of that to ensure that staff are exposed to not only institutional training but at the technical and tertiary levels so that they can be able to offer even more to those prisoners.”

The Acting Director also mentioned that efforts are currently being made to improve the security aspect of the prison service with the intake of additional staff.

While ruling out any perceptions of discrimination towards women, Samuels says that the prison service is currently in the process of training and seeking prospective male employees to augment the number of security personnel.

“It’s no form of discrimination that we are not taking in females but specifically at this time, we want to target males because the demand is in the custodial fields for persons to overlook the daily security needs of prisoners. We have 39 recruits currently in training and before the end of this week we will be putting out an advertisement since we have 50 vacancies at the entry level for prison officers.”

The prison service has also been making continuous efforts at ensuring that the employees that are brought into the system do not pose a threat to it. This is done by appropriate vetting and consistent monitoring of these officers since mental durability is required to deter manipulation by prisoners to do or assist in illegal activity.

 

By: Stephon Gabriel