Gail Alexan­der

One con­vic­tion and you're out–no bail for 120 days.The Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to nar­row down re­peat of­fend­ers' abil­i­ty to get bail when they are ac­cused of dan­ger­ous and vi­o­lent crimes, in­clud­ing drug traf­fick­ing or sex crimes.Pi­lot­ing leg­is­la­tion to tight­en the Bail Act in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan cit­ed po­lice sta­tis­tics on sev­er­al of­fend­ers who racked up be­tween 11 and 20 charges over 20-plus years, re­ceiv­ing bail on all charges.

He said: "The crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is be­ing ma­nip­u­lat­ed by ban­dits. T&T is en­gaged in a war against crime. We've seen law­less el­e­ments en­croach even fur­ther. Look at the re­cent mur­der and rob­bery in the Sen­tinel is­sue–a fa­ther close to re­tire­ment mur­dered in cold blood. The most pre­med­i­tat­ed of rob­beries: Ce­ment bags used to re­in­force the ve­hi­cle–the kind of thing you see in movies."The mur­der­er who rapes a young child in her dy­ing min­utes. Don't tell me that pover­ty is an ex­cuse! That is a dif­fer­ent kind of evil," he added.

The bill re­quires a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage.Ram­lo­gan said Par­lia­ment had been slow to re­act to the crime sit­u­a­tion and un­re­spon­sive to the cries of frus­tra­tion from cit­i­zens. He said if one gang pen­e­trat­ed a com­mu­ni­ty it be­came dif­fi­cult for po­lice to get in­for­ma­tion, as the gang would be se­cret­ed in the bo­som of the com­mu­ni­ty."That's a re­al­i­ty we must face," he said.

Say­ing the bill was an ef­fort to re­bal­ance the scales of jus­tice, Ram­lo­gan said bail leg­is­la­tion over the years had al­lowed those seek­ing bail to have three, and lat­er two con­vic­tions.Un­der the pro­posed amend­ment, he said this would be nar­rowed down to one con­vic­tion and peo­ple with that num­ber would have to wait 120 days to get bail from a judge or mag­is­trate.

Al­so, if a per­son was re­leased from jail and got charged for an­oth­er of­fence with­in ten years of the re­lease date, they would be un­able to get bail for 120 days."If you are a re­peat of­fend­er, we're say­ing enough is enough. One strike and you're out–no bail. We're not deny­ing bail out­right, but they will have to wait 120 days if they're not clean (of con­vic­tions). If you're clean, the law won't bite. We must en­sure crim­i­nals don't out­ma­noeu­vre the Par­lia­ment," Ram­lo­gan said.

Ram­lo­gan said many ac­cused ex­ploit­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty of be­ing out on bail, us­ing it to com­mit rob­beries to get funds to hire ex­pen­sive lawyers or to ha­rass, in­tim­i­date or kill wit­ness­es.He de­tailed cas­es from po­lice sta­tis­tics, not­ing where one per­son re­ceived bail for charges be­tween 1991 and 2011 for of­fences rang­ing from rob­bery to co­caine, mar­i­jua­na and nar­cotics pos­ses­sion.

An­oth­er in­volved a sim­i­lar num­ber of charges from 1988 to 2007 for mat­ters rang­ing from ob­tain­ing goods by false pre­tences and cred­it-card fraud to in­cur­ring debts, mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion and fraud­u­lent con­ver­sion of funds. Ram­lo­gan gave the in­for­ma­tion to Op­po­si­tion MPs to see for them­selves.

Ram­lo­gan said the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment al­so recog­nised the lack­adaisi­cal sit­u­a­tion and Par­lia­ment need­ed to guide the ju­di­cial arm on the is­sue. He cit­ed ex­am­ples of how the pro­pos­al could cut the per­pe­tra­tion rate by large per­cent­ages.