On Sunday afternoon, in wrapping up the parliamentary debate on the state of emergency and its extension by three months, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar announced a package of measures aimed at allowing the State to maintain the upper hand against the criminal underworld. While the Prime Minister's announcement with regard to the reduction of the curfew hours to five hours (from 11 pm to 4 am) grabbed the headlines, the more significant aspect of the speech was the crime-fighting and justice-improvement measures that the security forces will be able to use after the state of emergency. Among the measures outlined by the Prime Minister were renewed efforts to speed up the pace of the delivery of justice.
The Director of Public Prosecutions has been mandated to come up with a policy whose aim is to provide an amnesty for minor cases more than five years old.The Government appears to be hoping that by clearing this backlog of cases, the magistracy will be given the space and time to deal with more serious crimes. On the other hand, by wiping the slate clean of certain minor offences by way of the amnesty, the State may send the message that it may be acceptable to break some laws-which may not involve crimes against the person or against property. In going in this direction, the Government may be sending a mixed message with regard to its war on crime. The Prime Minister also announced the rejuvenation of several ideas that have been endlessly discussed but never fully implemented.
The bill to abolish preliminary inquiries is one law that is a holdover from previous Parliaments as is the plan to establish a gun court aimed at providing fast-track justice to those criminals who have been held with firearms in the commission of crimes. While these three proposals appear to be serious adjustments aimed at improving the efficiency of T&T's criminal justice system, the Government should not assume that it will receive the support of the Parliament or the population in attempting to move its anti-crime agenda forward. The Government should make a special effort to persuade the Opposition-and those outside Parliament who may have doubts about the package of measures-about the strength of its plans by conducting the requisite cost-benefit analyses and looking at the pros and cons of its proposals.
While the Government has the necessary majority in Parliament to pass most legislation, the message that the Government sends by winning the unanimous support of the Opposition is much more powerful than if the support is divided. The other important aspect of the Prime Minister's statement was her focus on improving the tools with which to fight crime. Here she mentioned DNA legislation aimed at putting the legal muscle on the skeleton of the existing DNA law, which seems to have languished for reasons that have never been made clear.
The centralisation and the technological improvement to the E999 rapid response system will also be a useful tool in the armoury of the crimefighters-especially if it is linked to a computerised system that allows police on patrol to tap into the database of the Licensing Department. The response time of the police department would also be improved if the Government were to extend the use of CCTV throughout the country, while introducing speed traps and cameras mounted on the traffic lights at key intersections in order to reduce the incidence of speeding and the breaking of traffic lights.