A brawl at the Port of Spain prison on Tuesday left prison officers and prisoners hospitalized and revealed a major understaffing issue within the Prison Service.

This has prompted calls by the acting Prisons Commissioner and the head of the Prison Officers’ Association for changes in the service’s recruitment policy.

Senior prison officials said the brawl stemmed from a dispute between a prisoner and a prison officer who was escorting him to his cell at around 10:15 am on Tuesday when the inmate refused to obey instructions to return to his cell.

Acting Prisons Commissioner Deopersad Ramoutar said the prisoner became violent and uncontrollable, resulting in the officer being assaulted.

The officer tried to defend himself but other inmates, riled up by the fight, also jumped into the fray.

Ramoutar said officers were required to use “a level of force” to return the inmates to their cells. The fracas left both officers and inmates with injuries but none were life-threatening.

Some of the injured received medical attention at the prison infirmary while several others were taken to hospital. The incident is being investigated by the prison service and police.

Ramoutar said five prison officers and six prisoners were injured. But Prison Officers’ Association president Gerard Gordon said 17 prison officers and four prisoners were injured. Ramoutar could not confirm or deny Gordon’s statement when asked by Newsday.

Gordon also said that describing the incident as a brawl was incorrect. “It’s not a brawl and it’s not an altercation. Once you have people who are incarcerated and something like that happens, it’s a riot… They assaulted the officer, which led to this whole thing getting out of hand. So it’s not a brawl. If we live in the free world, is a brawl.”

He said those injured during the “riot” had to be taken to the hospital.

While the incident lasted just ten minutes, Gordon said it has shed light on a years-long problem of understaffing in the service.

[caption id="attachment_1067541" align="alignnone" width="733"] Deopersad Ramoutar -[/caption]

Ramoutar commended the officers and said situations like those “are all in a day’s work” for prison officers, who he described as “undervalued and unappreciated.”

Gordon said understaffed should also be added to this description and suggested the number of prison officers injured was partly a result of the staff shortage facing the service.

“Remember, it’s not four against 17. The prison population is over 500 and down in that particular division, you’re looking at a couple hundred people. “The officers would have come to the aid of the officer who was assaulted and they would have then retreated because they are outnumbered, literally.” He said the prison environment does not lend to officers being able to “manage the numbers in the way that it should be.”

He said while a riot is nothing strange, it is concerning and something that he believes was foretold.

“That Port of Spain prison is on the brink of having something happen there, and th