The Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London has engaged the services of an eleven-member team, from the United Kingdom, to conduct a refresher course in control and restraint of prisoners in Anguilla.
The trainers, from six different prisons in England and one in Scotland, work for the Serco Group, a private UK public services company. They are part of an overall team which is also conducting similar training in the Turks and Caicos Islands and the British Virgin Islands.
The team in Anguilla comprises: Vicky Pauls, Director; William Hall, Assistant Director; and Lisa Brooks, Daniel Davies, Gareth Hambleton, Stuart Cox, Martin Blantherwick, Mohammed Unoru, Gary Leadbeatier, Ian Brassett and Shawn West.
The participants in the course, which began in Anguilla on Monday, February 27, at the Police Headquarters Conference Room, include prison officers from Her Majesty’s Prison, members of the Royal Anguilla Police Force and the Probation Department.
Ms. Pauls, the Team Director, told The Anguillian newspaper that the team was delivering the training in custodial services, on behalf of the Ministry of Justice in the UK, at the request of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and in support of Prison Superintendent, Ms. Carice Sasso. The team will be in Anguilla until the end of March.
Ms. Sasso said every year Her Majesty’s Prison was required to have refresher training for its staff, but there was no such training over the past two years, therefore necessitating the need for the current course. “This training is about control and restraint,” she explained. “It is a last resort in training if prisoners, in prison terms, are ‘kicking off or acting up’. Officers have to be taught the different techniques in using control and restraint, but we do not use it unless there is a need for it.”
She added: “The techniques being taught are fully hands on, with up close and personal approaches that include low, medium and high levels of control and restraint.”
Ms. Sasso, who quickly moved up through the ranks at Her Majesty’s Prison in Anguilla, has been serving there for almost six years having joined the service in June 2012. After a period of training and grooming, she was appointed Prison Superintendent in September 2017 in succession to Mr Conrad Gumbs. She is both the first and youngest woman in that position in the British Overseas Territories.
At present there are 51 male inmates at Her Majesty’s Prison which has a capacity for 116. There are 37 prison officers, not including the Superintendent and the other managers.
