Prisoners’ Xmas plans foiled as officers seize homemade wine during raid

Dec 09, 2019 News

– other illicit items found, electronic scanners to be installed soon

By Shikema Dey

It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
That was until the police and prison officers found the home-made wine.
It happened last Saturday, when ranks from the Guyana Prison Service and the Guyana Police Force carried out one of their routine searches at the Camp Street, Lusignan, New Amsterdam, Timerhi and Mazaruni prisons.
They seized two five gallon containers of homemade wine, among other items.
It appears that the prisoners wanted a traditional Guyanese Christmas, inclusive of wine and all the trimmings, as according to Director of Prisons, Gladwin Samuels, the inmates use scraps from the kitchen to create their special brew.
“The reality of it is that all of the stuff they use, they are waste from the kitchen, so you have water, you have the eggplant skin, you have the rice and they mix it and make the wine.”

Some of the contraband items seized in the search

Director of Prisons, Gladwin Samuels

Aside from the wine, ranks seized 48 improvised weapons, eleven cell phones, nine sim cards; triple ‘a’ batteries, nineteen smoking utensils, fourteen metal spoons, a memory card and seven cell phones batteries.
They also found a quantity of cannabis, a small quantity of suspected ecstasy powder, twelve cell phone chargers, 51cigarette lighters and a quantity of cigarettes; a quantity of razor blades, five ropes, a hacksaw blade, thirteen pieces of wire and five bottles along with two five gallon containers of homemade wine.
Despite the countless search exercises carried out across all the prison facilities, contraband items continue to make their way past vigilant prison officers.
To this, Samuels disclosed that scanners will be introduced at the prisons by the New Year to help clamp down on same reoccurring.
“We have been locking up the errant officers but the problem is we can’t get them all so that’s why we will be introducing scanners especially at the main prison to monitor the system electronically so we can be more efficient in detecting these persons who are smuggling the goods inside.”
Further, the Director said that they will continue with the random searches throughout the prisons to ensure that such long lists of illicit items are not passed into the prison again.

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