The escape of five prisoners from Golden Grove prison suggested issues with the infrastructure of the prison's dormitory, after the prisoners broke through the roof of an apparently dilapidated structure.

The breakout ended with grand theatre, as officers pulled Anthony Seepersad, the last of the escapees, from the trunk of a car on Morne Coco Road in Diego Martin during a stop and search.

The re-arrest tableau had an air of unreality to it, as video recorded an apparently disoriented Seepersad responding vaguely to police questions.

The escape of the five men from prison just before midnight on March 20, followed by their quick recapture, suggests a seized opportunity, not a considered plan. The first inmate was recaptured hours after his escape, and Seepersad was held on Wednesday.

It should be held as a given that prisoners will take advantage of any weakness in prison security to seek escape, but those efforts don't always end as gracefully as this week's did.

In December 2017 at Carrera Island, a facility widely regarded as inescapable, Unil Phillip dived into the ocean. His body was found two days later near Trinmar's North Field.

Golden Grove's easily breached dormitory roof isn't the only infrastructure failure to plague the prison. In May 2019, eight prisoners escaped from the prison through a hole that was only discovered by guards the next morning. Five were recaptured within a day of their escape.

Between 2017 and 2020, there were more than a dozen of these micro-escapes. A prisoner handcuffed to a bed at Caura escaped only to be recaptured seven hours later. Another jumps off the TT Spirit ferry while it was in Scarborough harbour, only to be taken into custody in minutes.

Four of the five prisoners to escape in last week's breakout were transferred to Golden Grove for rehabilitation training in preparation for their release in 2023.

Within a year, these four inmates would have had a chance to restart their lives with training provided by the prison, but they will now serve an additional 32 months of jail time.

Is the prisons system tracking an increase in these doomed breaks for freedom and developing an understanding of what is happening?

Is the balance between retraining inmates to return to society and the restrictions necessary for effective imprisonment offering hope to even short-term prisoners? Are there enough realistic, attractive options for rehabilitation and readying them to return to life outside?

Prison life is a numbing parade of unpalatable sameness leavened only by potential threat and the promise of punishment for stepping off a razor-thin line of conduct.

If inmates are willing to risk years of added sentencing for hours of freedom, perhaps it's time to have another look at what incarceration means to the imprisoned.

The post That not-that-great escape appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.

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