Prison Commissioner Hubert Dean has called for tougher measures against inmates who spurn programmes and who use Westgate as a virtual hotel.

He said the automatic one third remission for prisoners who stay out of trouble should be withdrawn so prisoners who don?t show an interest in rehabilitation have to serve a full term.

And he said time should only be shaved off a sentence for those who do comply with the programmes. Currently prisoners are eligible for parole automatically after serving one third of their sentence.

Some critics of the current set up have called for 23-hour-a-day lock-down for prisoners who avoid training and corrective behaviour programmes. But Mr. Dean said this would only give some prisoners what they wanted.

?He will be up in his cell, sleeping and enjoying his day.

?Some people don?t want to be better, they want to be criminals and the community is right when they say it is like the Westgate Hotel.

?They get three square meals, a roof over their head and they don?t have to work. Basically what they are doing is what they were doing when they were sitting on the wall.

He said some prisoners were set on returning to a lucrative life of crime.

?Some of them make more money in a week than the rest of us make in a year through selling drugs, I can only speculate, so they don?t bother taking classes. They are just not interested.

?We need to put stiffer penalties in place, we need to be able to make some things mandatory. If things are mandatory we have that one third of their sentence to play with.?

He is concerned sex offenders could ignore all their programmes and come out unchanged and unsupervised on release.

Such convicts should be registered and electronically tagged said Mr. Dean who said the community had a right to know of sex offenders living in their midst.

?In other jurisdictions you know if you have a sex offender in your area. There should be some sort of register to keep track.?

Tagging had been suggested by Government for some offenders although no details were given and Mr. Dean said he had heard nothing about it since.

?I would like to see more home monitoring.?

Electronic monitoring of inmates jailed for civil debt and traffic violations could free up prison space said Mr. Dean who said they could be put on community service.

?It would mean they could only move about at a certain time, it?s very restrictive for them.

?I would certainly like to use it for work release.?

Mr. Dean denied reports there were not enough programmes for inmates and said the prison offered carpentry and mechanics and air conditioning while motor body work and painting might soon be introduced at Westgate.

He said the prison was about to hook up with the Bermuda College to offer a culinary arts programme.