Minister of Home Affairs Wilfred Abrahams said on Monday that while quarantine and isolation rules prevented some prisoners who had completed their sentences from leaving Her Majesty’s Prison Dodds during the lockdown, all inmates who have completed their sentence and the programme for reintegration into society, have been released.
In a statement from the COVID Communications Unit, Abrahams said while the delay in release of prisoners would have caused concern to inmates and their loved ones, as well as to the families of prison officers, who similarly were not allowed to leave the prison compound at that time, it was a necessary measure.
A lockdown policy was implemented after an outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19) at the prison.
The outbreak at the prison started on December 31, last year with the diagnosis of a prison officer.
Abrahams said that it was this “stringency, strict adherence to protocols and an intensive education campaign which interrupted the spread of the disease” at HMP Dodds and ensured that people at the prison “did not present a danger to their own families and to Barbados in general”. (PR)
