Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan says the Elec­tron­ic Mon­i­tor­ing Bill is a rev­o­lu­tion­ary piece of leg­is­la­tion. He said the sys­tem will be "throw­ing out a life­line" to peo­ple and give an op­por­tu­ni­ty for ear­ly re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion. Ram­lo­gan said the bill was an im­por­tant one and formed part of the ar­se­nal in the fight against crime and the trans­for­ma­tion of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

He said when it be­comes law it will give peo­ple a new lease on life. He said: "Elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing, notwith­stand­ing all that has been said, is the way for­ward." He said many coun­tries were head­ing in that di­rec­tion to have elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing and tag­ging of crim­i­nals.

Ram­lo­gan was speak­ing in the Sen­ate on Fri­day at Tow­er D, Wa­ter­front Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain. He said elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing can be used in three ways: pre-tri­al, sen­tenc­ing and ear­ly re­lease. He said in the first in­stance, elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing is in­tend­ed to keep peo­ple out of jail.

Ram­lo­gan said an­oth­er "ob­vi­ous" ben­e­fit was eas­ing the over­crowd­ing in the jails. He al­so said the pub­lic will be "bet­ter pro­tect­ed." "We have to be care­ful be­cause the time has come to re-bal­ance the scales of the jus­tice in favour of the law-abid­ing cit­i­zens," he said.

The AG said the in­no­v­a­tive and tech­no­log­i­cal de­vice had re­ceived much con­sti­tu­tion­al ar­gu­ments in sev­er­al ju­ris­dic­tions around the world. He said: "The whole thrust of this gov­ern­ment's pol­i­cy is to keep the fel­las out of the jail, tag them and mon­i­tor them, ease the over­crowd­ing and give them a life­line to re­ha­bil­i­tate them­selves." He said Cab­i­net agreed that the pro­gramme will be in­tro­duced on a phased ba­sis for a pe­ri­od of one to three years in se­lect­ed ge­o­graph­i­cal ar­eas.

How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds said the AG's state­ment about the Cab­i­net's agree­ment for the EM to be in­tro­duced as a pi­lot pro­gramme "was a re­cent fab­ri­ca­tion." Hinds said Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney said noth­ing about a pi­lot pro­gramme. "And as­sum­ing that he (Ram­lo­gan) is cor­rect but not ac­cept­ing that, how will they do this pi­lot project in Trinidad and To­ba­go? What does he want to do?

"Try it out in Beetham, Sea Lots, Va­len­cia, Laven­tille and Care­nage? "How will they de­cide where?" Hinds urged peo­ple to stop com­mit­ting crimes be­cause "the gov­ern­ment is a threat to you." He said it ev­i­dent dur­ing the "failed" state of emer­gency last year.