Prison Service launches major recruitment drive

The Barbados Prison Service (BPS) has embarked on an extensive recruitment campaign in a bid to bolster its workforce and establish a new senior management position, Barbados TODAY has learnt.

The initiative aims to fill 15 prison officer positions and several civilian posts, while also establishing a groundbreaking Deputy Superintendent of Prisons role, potentially reshaping the prison’s hierarchical structure, Superintendent of Prisons Decarlo Payne said, predicting that 2025 would be a historic year for the prison service.

In relation to the new post, he said: “We submitted the proposal for the post and it is a post that has to be established through the Ministry of Public Service; it also has to be circularised in terms of The Civil Establishment Order. At this point we are not in a position to say how far along they are in the establishment of this post but we are working together to see that it becomes a reality.

“I suspect that sometime during the course of this year it is going to be established. Until then we cannot fill the post. At the time when the Permanent Secretary [in the Ministry of Home Affairs, Yvette Goddard] pronounced all the paperwork would have been submitted to the MPs. It is a process that takes a while but as soon as it is established it will go into The Civil Establishment Order and then the process of filling the post will start. We are not at that point as yet.

“We are very hopeful the position is established because it is very critical to what we are doing here [at the prison]. We never ever had the post so it will be the first for the prisons.”

The Deputy Superintendent of Prisons, Payne said, will run the Dodds facility in the absence of the superintendent and oversee human resource issues at the facility.

“It will also be a position of upward mobility,” Payne added. “There will be more senior posts to be filled as well when it comes into play. The position that I was promoted out of, that will be vacant and the deputy post will be vacant. So that is two senior posts that we will have room for. Depending on where the personnel for those posts are selected from, there will be two more posts vacant down the line. It will cascade right down from two senior posts, to two middle manager posts, to two supervisory posts, to two personnel officer posts. It would also add some additional numbers to our situation here as well.”

Last August, permanent secretary Goddard announced that plans were in the works to establish the Deputy Superintendent position, stating that the Ministry of Home Affairs was doing all it could to ensure the prison’s management had the power and resources to run Dodds efficiently and effectively.

As it relates to recruiting staff to fill other positions, Payne said plans have been in train since last November to improve the staff complement. There are currently 372 prison officers.

He said: “Our recruiting is at a mid-stage in terms of the process and hopefully, between now and the end of February, we should be ready. We will start before the end of the financial year in March. The money has already been committed and we are trying to get another 15 vacancies filled that would bring us back to our full complement. We are also trying to get civilian posts filled. So far, about four clerical posts have been confirmed, a dentist, two doctors, a dietician and a physiotherapist.”

Payne also disclosed some of the major rehabilitation programmes the service will be introducing this year.

“There will be a lot happening here in terms of programmes,” he told Barbados TODAY. “We have already started the process for the third cohort for hospitality training, which involves food preparation, bartending, waitering and cooking. Another initiative for the new year is the expansion of the farm. You will see an emphasis being placed on renewable energy. We are mainly implementing programmes that would contribute to the sustainability goals at the national level. We are looking at water harvesting in a bigger way, we would be looking to recycle water that we use that would normally go back to the aquifers. We want to use that water for irrigation purposes. This will help us focus on food security in that when the climate is dry we will have adequate supplies of water to irrigate the fields and produce crops year round.”

The prison superintendent also announced plans to upgrade the service’s transport fleet. He said the plan was to double the three prisoner transport vehicles currently in operation and those vehicles would either be hybrid or fully electric.

Payne was appointed as the new superintendent of prisons effective from October 15 last year, formalising his role after he had been acting in the position since May 2022 when Lieutenant Colonel John Nurse retired after 22 years at the helm.

In his statement on December 13 formally announcing his appointment, the 40-year veteran in corrections expressed commitment to leveraging his expertise to enhance the Barbados Prison Service’s management and professional development.
sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.bb