Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der is stand­ing by his po­si­tion that cer­tain young of­fend­ers should be tried as adults, ar­gu­ing that their ac­tions and in­tent in com­mit­ting se­ri­ous crimes re­flect adult-lev­el de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said his pro­pos­al is not about pun­ish­ing chil­dren harsh­ly, but about en­sur­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty in light of the grow­ing num­ber of of­fences be­ing com­mit­ted by mi­nors.

“If I was to bring a law that speaks to young per­sons be­cause of their ac­tions and their in­ten­tions, to be deemed an adult, ob­vi­ous­ly I wouldn’t place them among the hard­line crim­i­nal pop­u­la­tion,” he ex­plained. “But I would keep them at a par­tic­u­lar lo­ca­tion and still try them as adults.”

Alexan­der said the coun­try must con­front the chang­ing re­al­i­ty of youth in­volve­ment in se­ri­ous crimes, not­ing that many of­fend­ers to­day can­not be viewed in the same light as chil­dren of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions.

“If chil­dren are go­ing in a par­tic­u­lar di­rec­tion, they can­not be seen as chil­dren,” he said. “Some of them come from good homes and struc­tured back­grounds, yet they will­ing­ly en­gage in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. We have to face that re­al­i­ty.” The min­is­ter’s com­ments come amid na­tion­al de­bate on how the jus­tice sys­tem should treat ju­ve­nile of­fend­ers.

Alexan­der al­so took aim at for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and cur­rent Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip, Mar­vin Gon­za­les, who ques­tioned Gov­ern­ment’s re­align­ment in which Alexan­der was put in charge of mat­ters in the Prison Ser­vice.

“For Mr Gon­za­les, ob­vi­ous­ly, he don’t seem to read well. He don’t seem to un­der­stand. He con­tin­ues to talk about some­thing that has gone, and we con­tin­ue to say it’s gone, and I am look­ing to take it that par­tic­u­lar di­rec­tion. He’s still talk­ing about it. So, ap­par­ent­ly, he’s not read­ing the same news­pa­per or lis­ten­ing to the same chan­nel he seems to be on, keep­ing press con­fer­ences about over and over.”