Senior Political Reporter
Justice Minister Devesh Maharaj says prisoners will be required to successfully complete mandatory rehabilitation programmes before they can seek early release on parole.
However, Opposition Senator Faris Al-Rawi argues that courts should retain the authority to decide whether persons convicted of heinous crimes, including child rape, are eligible for parole.
Both senators spoke during yesterday’s Senate debate on a bill to provide for parole which was recently passed in the House of Representatives. The bill seeks to facilitate the early release of prisoners through a supervised reintegration process requiring inmates to meet conditions under a parole system. Maharaj said the legislation is aimed at reducing recidivism and breaking the cycle of repeat offending.
“The bill is a giant step towards a second chance, but you have to work for parole and ensure you participate in it,” Maharaj said.
Maharaj said between 2015 and 2025, 53,183 people were charged, of whom 11,437 were repeat offenders, representing a 22 per cent recidivism rate. He also detailed recidivism rates between 2022 and 2026, ranging from 57 to 58 per cent.
“People come out, commit crimes and return — it’s like a school in the prisons,” he said.
Maharaj said current rehabilitation programmes are largely run by faith-based non-governmental organisations and are not properly managed by the State. He said there is no specific budgetary allocation for such programmes and only 57 officers are assigned to rehabilitation services for a prison population of more than 3,000 inmates. He added that participation in rehabilitation programmes is currently voluntary.
“Prisoners are coming in and determining whether or not they can or should attend these programmes, or maybe they lime with the boys in a different area. So there’s nothing to manage in totality, prisoners entering the system. But under parole, we’ll be making rehabilitation a mandatory aspect of the prison service,” Maharaj said.
He also said prisons require systems to monitor and evaluate whether inmates have genuinely changed after completing rehabilitation programmes.
Maharaj argued that the current remission system is inadequate. Under that system, inmates with good behaviour and sentences of less than one year may have part of their sentence reduced. However, he said prison authorities have complained that some inmates merely pretend to reform in order to secure release.
“They pretend to behave good, don’t make too much koochoor, serve their time and come out. But they’re not rehabilitated,” he said.
Maharaj said prisoners will not be recommended for partial or full parole unless they successfully complete all prescribed rehabilitation programmes. He added that further legislation will be introduced to amend the remission system to incorporate rehabilitation requirements.
The bill also allows prison officers to be trained as parole officers.
However, Al-Rawi expressed “deep concerns” with the legislation, saying the People’s National Movement’s 2022 version of a parole bill left it to the courts to determine whether offenders convicted of heinous crimes should be eligible for parole.
“This was because we have to consider that we’re allowing egregious sexual offences, including child rape, children as victims, human trafficking and all manner of consequences; and in our view, we left it to the court in sentencing to say, ‘You’re now convicted and sentenced as follows, with or without eligibility for parole,’” he said.
He added: “That’s how you see it on television; the US system is built that way. People are sentenced on the basis of X with no eligibility for parole.”
Al-Rawi argued that judges and juries, being closest to the facts of each case, should determine whether a convicted person should ever qualify for parole.
“When you’re dealing with a society that has depravity of this kind — and all societies do, heinous acts are committed — we really ought to allow the judge and jury who are closest to the facts to consider whether a person should ever be entitled to eligibility for parole,” he said.
Al-Rawi also noted that the PNM’s proposed legislation had sought to include child offenders, given the existence of the Children’s Court, but he said this issue was not addressed in the Government’s bill.
