Amid the spi­ralling mur­der rate, a re­vised Bail Bill re­mains un­der con­sid­er­a­tion and is a work in progress.

Guardian Me­dia con­firmed this yes­ter­day fol­low­ing act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob’s re­peat­ed calls for the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion to ex­am­ine a re­vised Bail Bill. The ini­tial bill was de­feat­ed in the Sen­ate in Ju­ly.

Ja­cob did so af­ter last Sun­day’s mur­der of four peo­ple in Diego Mar­tin, in­clud­ing a woman and a three-year-old boy. Po­lice of­fi­cers main­tained the call af­ter Thurs­day’s mur­der of St James cou­ple Ko­rey Clarke and Saman­tha Patrick. Their sev­en-month-old daugh­ter sur­vived when she was shield­ed by her par­ents’ bod­ies.

The Bail (Amend­ment Ex­ten­sion of Du­ra­tion) bill 2022 al­lowed courts to de­ny bail for 120 days to peo­ple charged with spe­cif­ic of­fences un­der laws per­tain­ing to firearms, gangs, drugs, sex­u­al of­fences, ter­ror­ism and traf­fick­ing in per­sons.

Due to ex­pire in Au­gust, the Sen­ate de­bate was to have ex­tend­ed the bill. It re­quired a spe­cial three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage. But apart from Op­po­si­tion non-sup­port, the Gov­ern­ment was al­so un­able to gar­ner the sup­port of four In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, need­ed for the req­ui­site 19 votes to pass the bill.

Since then, how­ev­er, the crime rate es­ca­lat­ed, with mur­ders al­so soar­ing to­wards a record high. This week, Ja­cob said, not on­ly are gangs break­ing their for­mer “taboo” rule of not tar­get­ing women and chil­dren, but their use of au­to­mat­ic weapons in “spray­ing” bul­lets hurt more peo­ple.

Af­ter the bill’s de­feat and af­ter the Privy Coun­cil up­held the lo­cal courts’ rul­ing - al­low­ing bail for mur­der - the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice had stat­ed it “was in the process of work­ing out a com­pre­hen­sive sys­tem of bail re­form” with fo­cus on leg­is­la­tion that will se­cure the rights of all cit­i­zens.

A de­feat­ed bill can be re­turned to Par­lia­ment six months af­ter its de­feat.

Yes­ter­day, Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, said when the bill failed, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, did state there would be a com­plete ex­am­i­na­tion of bail and a new com­pre­hen­sive bill would be draft­ed.

“This is a work in progress, al­so tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the Privy Coun­cil’s rul­ing o is­sues of bail for mur­der,” Beck­les said.

In Au­gust, Ar­mour said he’d have a more en­gaged process of con­sul­ta­tions on the new Bail Bill be­ing framed. What will al­so be done dif­fer­ent­ly is to have ex­per­tise - crim­i­nol­o­gists and oth­ers - who’ll as­sist in get­ting the mes­sage across bet­ter to make the bill more “fact sen­si­tive and man­age­able” for ac­cep­tance.

Ar­mour had said the Gov­ern­ment would learn from the first at­tempt to the ex­tent that it need­ed to “go out there and do gen­er­al con­sul­ta­tions, work with the leg­is­la­tion’s pro­vi­sions, with the con­cerns peo­ple have and then we’ll go back to the Par­lia­ment and make the case again.”

The pri­or­i­ty, he added, had to be to get the Op­po­si­tion to un­der­stand that while peo­ple’s rights are be­ing re­spect­ed, there’s need to have cit­i­zens feel safe and that hav­ing re­peat of­fend­ers “in the streets” is a con­cern that needs ad­dress­ing.

Ar­mour said be­fore pi­lot­ing an­oth­er bill, he will spend more time than he did with the first one, speak­ing with Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to get them to un­der­stand what he’s try­ing to ac­com­plish and would par­tic­u­lar­ly speak to In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

“De­pends on what’s pre­sent­ed”

Asked about CoP Ja­cob’s call for a re­vised Bail bill, yes­ter­day In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards said it “de­pends on what is pre­sent­ed.”

On the leg­isla­tive fix for crime, Richards rec­om­mend­ed ex­pe­dit­ing crim­i­nal court sys­tems that en­force con­se­quences of mat­ters, start­ing with­in one year of charges be­ing laid on crim­i­nal mat­ters and be­ing com­plet­ed in no more than three years of start­ing. He al­so sug­gest­ed ed­u­ca­tion re­form fo­cus­ing on vul­ner­a­ble learn­ers falling through the sys­tem, mak­ing them tar­gets for gangs.

Al­so con­tact­ed, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira said a more holis­tic ap­proach is need­ed in tack­ling crime from ed­u­ca­tion to even the way cities are de­signed.

On bail, he added, “Our ap­proach to bail is very one-di­men­sion­al and has to be re­vis­it­ed. It should be ex­am­ined in a way to have ap­pro­pri­ate bail.

“For ex­am­ple, those who aren’t a threat to so­ci­ety and should get bail, are of­ten de­prived. That’s wrong. Then there are those who de­serve to be locked up but may get bail as - in or­gan­ised crime en­vi­ron­ments - it’s se­cured eas­i­ly.”

Vieira added, “More peo­ple should be out on bail nonethe­less. The knock-on ef­fects are hor­ri­ble when a sole bread­win­ner can­not get bail. Al­so: our bor­ders aren’t suf­fi­cient­ly strong­ly se­cured and re­quire more at­ten­tion. The in­flux of guns, drugs and hu­man/wildlife traf­fick­ing is im­pact­ing so­ci­ety.”

Of Ja­cob’s call for the bill, Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said, “We sup­port a gen­er­al elec­tion....noth­ing will help the miss­ing PM (Dr Kei­th Row­ley) and clue­less (Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald) Hinds. They al­ready have laws and the Trea­sury at their com­mand.”