On Wednesday August 13, 2014, the Minister of Justice the Honorable Dennis Richardson signed a letter along with Henk Van Den Heuvel the Director/Owner of the LICCOM Company in the presence of members of his cabinet including the Prison Director Edward Rohan.
It concerns an agreement for preparations for the expansion of the Prison at Point Blanche on two levels. The signing of the letter of intent is another step in the process of executing the plans to expand and upgrade the facilities at the Point Blanche Prison currently where all inmates are housed. To do that the amount of cells need to increase and the prison needs to comply with international standards. The Prison at Point Blanche will be expanded with two levels thereby doubling its present capacity and offering the opportunity to house prisoner’s ages 18 years to 24 years separately with all the necessary facilities that prison need and have to comply with these days. The youth ages 12 to 18 will be taken care of in a separate state of the art facility under a different environment geared towards the reintroduction of them as productive citizen of this community. This facility will be ready in October of the present year The expansion of the Prison at Point Blanche will be finalize at the ending of 2015. The first phase of the renovations has to been finalized. Phases two and three are now in progress. All present expressed great satisfaction with this achievement as the island is taking progressive steps towards realizing the so called plans of approach established before Country Status was attained on 10-10-10.
The Ministry of Justice is especially proud because this means that it will shortly be able to combat crime on a larger scale and provide the much needed and long awaited safety within our community.
Also present at the signing were representatives of Justice Ministry; Mr. Ron Verhaar (Project Manager at the Minister’s Cabinet), and Mr. Jarl Maduro (Ministry’s Financial Controller).