POLICE investigating Saturday’s explosion at the General Penitentiary in downtown Kingston say they are likely to question warders about possible involvement in the failed escape bid by inmates.

At the same time the authorities have ordered a security crackdown at the prison and said that they would install surveillance equipment which they first promised to put in nearly two years ago as a matter of urgency.

In Saturday’s blast, inmates are believed to have used dynamite in an attempt to blow a hole in the prison’s perimeter wall, through which up to 60 prisoners hoped to escape. The hole caused by the blast, however, was too small for the prisoners to pass through.

“We have not yet held the culprits but we are getting some very good intelligence which will lead us to interrogate some warders and some inmates as well,” said assistant commissioner of police Arthur “Stitch” Martin, who is leading the investigations.

Martin declined to comment further.

However, officials had initially indicated that a fuse cap and detonator wires were found at the scene.

Yesterday the parliamentary secretary for national security, Kern Spencer, said that the Jamaica Defence Force was helping to restore order at the prison while a sweep was being done for explosives and other contraband.

“For the short term we have asked the Jamaica Defence Force for additional soldiers to help warders do round-the-clock interior patrols,” Spencer said.

Soldiers have been helping to man the island’s prisons the past two years since about 800 warders were suspended for taking part in what the authorities said was an illegal strike, putting pressure on the security system.

About 600 of those warders are to return to work this year under an agreement brokered between their union and the national security minister, Dr Peter Phillips. Some of the reinstated warders will be posted at the General Penitentiary.

Spencer also said that police dogs, trained to detect explosives, were being sent into the prison yesterday, but there was no indication they found anything. The authorities have also ordered that vegetable gardens be removed from the prison compound for fear they were being used to hide contraband.

“Explosives might be hidden underground in these gardens and the vegetables used as camouflage,” he said.

According to Spencer, the government will this week also order two systems — one of which will be installed at the General Penitentiary — to block cellular telephone transmissions, which has been a bane for the authorities.

Two years ago inmates at the St Catherine District Prison used mobile phones, smuggled into the facility, to alert the outside world of a mass beating of inmates by police and soldiers. But the authorities say that the phones are used by inmates for much more, including organising criminal activity from behind bars.

Spencer said since the beginning of the year, 250 cellular phones have been found at the General Penitentiary.

Additionally, he said, Dome cameras will be bought and installed in all prisons to survey the interior and perimeter of the compound. He was, however, unable to say when they would be in place.

In July 2000, after another disturbance at the prison, the then Commissioner of Correctional Services Lt Col John Prescod outlined plans for increased security at the island’s prisons, including increase in the intensity of searches, installing video cameras on cell blocks and metal detectors at the front gates and outside monitoring of the prison premises by the police.

Not only were the cameras and metal detectors not in place, but according to Spencer daily searches of cells, which had lapsed at the General Penitentiary, were only now being re-started.

The Tower Street facility, a maximum security prison built in 1845, is severely overcrowded. It was designed to accommodate 850 prisoners but now has a population of 1,589.

“We are looking to remove 72 of those who are on remand there to the Horizon Remand Centre at Spanish Town Road to ease the overcrowding,” Spencer said.