The an­nounce­ment by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice of the es­tab­lish­ment of a spe­cialised court to deal with gun and sex­u­al of­fences is not on­ly a wel­comed move but will no doubt be seen in many quar­ters as long over­due.

Dur­ing much of his tenure, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith has be­moaned the ease at which some of­fend­ers are grant­ed bail when ap­pear­ing in court for il­le­gal gun pos­ses­sion and sim­i­lar charges.

In­deed over the years, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of guns on the coun­try’s streets has been re­gard­ed as the main con­trib­u­tor to the lev­el of se­ri­ous crime - ev­i­dent by the num­ber of mur­ders, shoot­ings and ag­gra­vat­ed rob­beries.

The same too can be said about sex­u­al of­fences.

In re­cent times, the ar­rests of sex­u­al preda­tors and of­fend­ers, for acts against mi­nors in par­tic­u­lar, have re­vealed just how grave sex­u­al crimes are in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Af­ter it was re­vealed that one of the key sus­pects in the mur­der of court clerk An­drea Bharatt had been on bail for a string of sex­u­al of­fences, the need to treat specif­i­cal­ly with such of­fend­ers grew even more ur­gent.

The coun­try can ill-af­ford to con­tin­ue on with gun and sex crimes cas­es slow­ly mak­ing their way through the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and clog­ging up the courts.

Most of the sex and gun of­fend­ers are prone to re­cidi­vism and a spe­cial court will au­gur well in putting those found guilty be­hind bars where they be­long.

But a spe­cial court alone is not the an­swer.

There must al­so be cor­rel­a­tive leg­is­la­tion to en­sure suc­cess at the oth­er end of the spec­trum.

In that re­gard, even the re­cent pas­sage of the wa­tered-down An­ti-Gang Bill could bol­ster the op­er­a­tions of this spe­cial court once it gets go­ing. So too would a stronger Bail Amend­ment Bill, if the Op­po­si­tion and Gov­ern­ment can both come to a con­sen­sus.

The TTPS must al­so place em­pha­sis on solv­ing crimes of this na­ture, ap­pre­hend­ing of­fend­ers and en­sur­ing there is suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence for charges to be laid. This may mean the for­ma­tion of sev­er­al more sep­cialised units to treat with spe­cif­ic of­fences.

How­ev­er, these units will be of no re­al use if they do not re­ceive the fi­nan­cial back­ing they need to be ef­fec­tive­ly re­sourced for the tasks at hand.

It is high time this coun­try recog­nis­es the need to get il­le­gal guns and those who use them off the streets, as well as en­sur­ing that sex­u­al of­fend­ers get the pun­ish­ment and treat­ment war­rant­ed for such crimes when they com­mit them.

Spe­cial courts to do this is thus a step in the right di­rec­tion and there should be no de­lay in en­sur­ing it is op­er­at­ing and func­tion­ing at full ca­pac­i­ty.