Melis­sa Doughty

A con­fer­ence in Oc­to­ber is the lat­est ef­fort by a T&T gov­ern­ment to in­tro­duce a sys­tem of restora­tive jus­tice in the coun­try. Plans for such a sys­tem have been un­der con­sid­er­a­tion since the tenure of the last PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion and had been re­vived dur­ing the tenure of for­mer jus­tice min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney.

Amidst con­cerns that the is­sue is once more on the back burn­er, of­fi­cials of the Min­istry of Jus­tice, in re­sponse to ques­tions from the Sun­day Guardian, say the up­com­ing con­fer­ence is among sev­er­al restora­tive jus­tice ini­tia­tives that are be­ing ac­tive­ly pur­sued.

"The Min­istry of Jus­tice recog­nis­es the sig­nif­i­cance of the prin­ci­ple of restora­tive jus­tice, which speaks to the re­sponse to crime that recog­nis­es the role of the com­mu­ni­ty in pre­vent­ing and re­spond­ing to crime and so­cial dis­or­der," an e-mailed re­sponse from the min­istry stat­ed.

"In ad­dress­ing mea­sures that would con­tribute to­ward the over­all ef­fi­ca­cy of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, the Min­istry of Jus­tice has em­barked up­on sev­er­al pro­pos­als that seek to em­brace var­i­ous restora­tive ini­tia­tives that aim to en­cour­age change in of­fend­ers and fa­cil­i­tate their rein­te­gra­tion in­to the com­mu­ni­ty."

The min­istry said the con­fer­ence presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the ex­plo­ration of a dif­fer­ent and un­tra­di­tion­al way of per­ceiv­ing, think­ing and mea­sur­ing how a so­ci­ety wish­es to re­spond to wrong­do­ing, when a crime or in­jus­tice takes place.Oth­er ini­tia­tives in­clude lay­ing a Pa­role Bill in Par­lia­ment, im­ple­men­ta­tion of an of­fend­er man­age­ment sys­tem and a youth jus­tice pol­i­cy. How­ev­er, no time frames have been set for im­ple­men­ta­tion of these mea­sures.

Among those call­ing for in­tro­duc­tion of restora­tive jus­tice in the coun­try's pe­nal sys­tem is news­pa­per colum­nist Deb­bie Ja­cob, a writer and teacher who has taught young men at the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC) and at the Roy­al Gaol.

Ja­cob said the is­sue of a speedy tri­al for young men needs to be ur­gent­ly ad­dressed, since some of them re­main in re­mand for as long as ten years be­fore they get a tri­al. For in­mates at YTC, she ex­plained, while there are many re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive­pro­grammes in place, pref­er­ence is giv­en to con­vict­ed young men rather those in re­mand.Ja­cob said lip ser­vice, is of­ten paid to con­cepts such as restora­tive jus­tice and no con­sid­er­a­tion is giv­en to leg­is­la­tion that will of­fer equal op­por­tu­ni­ty for those in re­mand.

Vol­ney, who was fired as jus­tice min­is­ter in Sep­tem­ber 2012, said dur­ing his tenure there were sev­er­al ini­tia­tives for in­tro­duc­tion of restora­tive jus­tice in T&T's pe­nal sys­tem.He said his min­istry pi­lot­ed the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (Elec­tron­ic Mon­i­tor­ing) Act which has since been en­act­ed and a Pa­role Bill was be­ing draft­ed "to al­low for the re-en­try of pris­on­ers in­to the so­ci­ety at the two-thirds mark of their term of im­pris­on­ment, once the in­mates sat­is­fied the terms and con­di­tions of restora­tion of them­selves be­ing of­fered on cam­pus."

Vol­ney said Cab­i­net had al­so ap­proved a pol­i­cy for es­tab­lish­ment of a Na­tion­al Of­fend­ers Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty to im­ple­ment restora­tive jus­tice mea­sures, in­clud­ing the hir­ing of of­fend­er-man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als to man­age the sys­tem. These pro­fes­sions were to take over the func­tion of pro­ba­tion of­fi­cers, Vol­ney ex­plained, and the pro­ba­tion of­fi­cials would have then been re­turned to the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment.

The for­mer min­is­ter said new prison rules were be­ing draft­ed to al­low for a mer­it sys­tem so that af­ter com­plet­ing a restora­tive course, the pris­on­er would have been paroled and mon­i­tored via an elec­tron­ic bracelet.He al­so said Rise Ra­dio, which was wide­ly dis­cussed, was one of the mea­sures be­ing im­ple­ment­ed at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca. It was be­ing op­er­at­ed by Garth and Natasha St Clair. There was al­so dis­cus­sion in 2012 about in­tro­duc­ing ca­ble tele­vi­sion in pris­ons.

"The vi­sion was to con­vert, with­in the walls of the prison, an in­mate vil­lage, where­by more free­dom of move­ment, air­time and sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties would have been giv­en to the in­mate," Vol­ney said.Al­so planned were prison fac­to­ries where in­mates could earn an in­come, as well as a smart-card sys­tem that would be used by rel­a­tives of in­mates to ac­cess the mon­ey and use it at a gen­er­al store in the prison.

Vol­ney said his vi­sion was for restora­tive jus­tice to be part of a par­a­digm shift with­in the prison sys­tem but that end­ed with his de­par­ture and "what I have heard is a con­cen­tra­tion on build­ing more lock-up pris­ons.""I want­ed to cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment to re­store peo­ple to good­ness. I have not seen any­thing to sug­gest, nor heard any­thing to sug­gest a more hu­mane ap­proach to restora­tive jus­tice than en­vi­sioned," he said.

At­tor­ney Christlyn Moore, who briefly served as jus­tice min­is­ter af­ter Vol­ney's de­par­ture from Sep­tem­ber 2012 to Sep­tem­ber 2013, said in a brief phone in­ter­view that when she left of­fice, the min­istry was defin­ing ex­act­ly what restora­tive jus­tice meant to T&T.At­tempts to con­tact re­cent­ly ap­point­ed Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Con­rad Bar­row for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.

Fitzger­ald Hinds, who was a min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in a for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, said lit­tle progress has been made with re­spect to restora­tive jus­tice and in­stead there have been back­ward steps which have set the sys­tem back by 15 or 20 years.

Hinds said he has spo­ken to se­nior of­fi­cials in the sys­tem who told him that while con­cep­tu­al­ly the con­cept of restora­tive jus­tice has been tak­en on, con­di­tions in the pris­ons are ex­act­ly as they were be­fore. He said the phi­los­o­phy of restora­tive jus­tice was about a lot more than im­proved prison con­di­tions.Un­der the PNM, Hinds said, 100 acres of Ca­roni land, which are now be­ing dis­trib­uted un­der the Land for the Land­less pro­gramme, had been ear­marked for a mod­ern prison that would have in­clud­ed a drug treat­ment cen­tre.

He said cur­rent prison fa­cil­i­ties have be­come re­volv­ing doors for pet­ty of­fend­ers, where­as the PNM's plan was to of­fer ther­a­peu­tic treat­ment to the of­fend­er, "make him clean, make him whole". He ex­plained that pris­ons were to be re­served for the most se­ri­ous of­fend­ers. Se­ri­ous­ly in­firm pris­on­ers and those over 65 would have been as­signed to live in a "low-se­cu­ri­ty, dor­mi­to­ry-type set­ting," for which the lands had al­ready been ap­proved by Cab­i­net.

There were al­so plans for a ju­ve­nile in­sti­tu­tion like the YTC for young girls who was deemed un­con­trol­lable by their fam­i­lies, so they would no longer have to be placed in the women's prison.

A 2010 brochure on the cen­tre stat­ed: "The Youth Train­ing Cen­tre is an in­sti­tu­tion which falls with­in the am­bit of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice and caters for young of­fend­ers be­tween the ages of 16 to 18 who have trans­gressed and sent here by the courts for a pe­ri­od of train­ing in lieu of im­pris­on­ment for a pe­ri­od of not less than three nor more than four years.

"The in­sti­tu­tion has as its prin­ci­ple phi­los­o­phy the process of re­form and train­ing which would en­able those com­mit­ted to its cus­tody to re­turn to and func­tion ben­e­fi­cial­ly in the so­ci­ety from which, by due process of law, they have been tem­porar­i­ly set apart."Hinds, like Vol­ney, said pris­on­ers would have been in­volved in man­u­fac­tur­ing and would have earned mon­ey that would have gone to their fam­i­lies or the fam­i­lies of their vic­tims. Fam­i­ly vis­its would have al­so been al­lowed.

Restora­tive jus­tice, PNM-style, he said, would have brought about heal­ing for both of­fend­er and vic­tim."We now know that the Min­istry of Jus­tice was not es­tab­lished with any mo­bil­i­ty of pur­pose. The Jus­tice Min­istry is lan­guish­ing and is not se­ri­ous about restora­tive jus­tice," he said.