Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Low­er House has passed ma­jor leg­is­la­tion al­low­ing peo­ple with mi­nor crim­i­nal con­vic­tions to have their records ex­punged af­ter a pe­ri­od of good be­hav­iour, ef­fec­tive­ly giv­ing them a clean slate.

The Crim­i­nal Records (Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of Of­fend­ers) Bill, 2026, was passed with­out amend­ments on Wednes­day evening.

To qual­i­fy to have their record ex­punged, an in­di­vid­ual must have re­ceived ei­ther a sen­tence that does not in­volve jail time or a prison term of no more than three years, fol­lowed by a crime-free re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od last­ing be­tween three and ten years.

How­ev­er, those con­vict­ed of se­ri­ous sched­uled of­fences, in­clud­ing mur­der, kid­nap­ping, sex­u­al crimes, wound­ing with in­tent, gang-re­lat­ed of­fences or ma­jor firearm and drug traf­fick­ing of­fences, as well as those who served sen­tences ex­ceed­ing three years, are strict­ly ex­clud­ed.

The process re­quires el­i­gi­ble per­sons to ap­ply to a spe­cialised Crim­i­nal Records (Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of Of­fend­ers) Board, which re­views their back­ground and ev­i­dence of good char­ac­ter be­fore of­fi­cial­ly mark­ing the con­vic­tion as ex­punged from pub­lic-fac­ing records.

Once a con­vic­tion is deemed “spent,” the in­di­vid­ual is legal­ly treat­ed as if they had nev­er com­mit­ted, been charged with, or been sen­tenced for the of­fence.

Con­tribut­ing to the de­bate, Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein said the law will help ease the so­cial stig­ma a per­son with a crim­i­nal past faces when ap­ply­ing for a job.

“This bill is telling you, okay, for a pe­ri­od of time, you have be­haved your­self. We un­der­stand you have a con­vic­tion, but you be­haved your­self. You have re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed your­self on your own, which means that your propen­si­ty to of­fend again may be very low. Mea­sur­ing all of those fac­tors, putting it in­to a piece of law now is say­ing that, lis­ten, we will clear your record, go out and work.”

He added, “Be­cause when the young man or the young woman who can­not get a job be­cause they may have com­mit­ted an of­fence in their ear­li­er years, you leave them on the streets, you leave them idle. And what hap­pens with idle hands? What hap­pens?”

Even if a con­vic­tion is spent, Clause 11 of the bill still re­quires dis­clo­sure for cer­tain sen­si­tive jobs, in­clud­ing judges, po­lice of­fi­cers, sol­diers, bankers, in­sur­ance agents and stock­bro­kers.

The re­quire­ment al­so ap­plies to reg­u­lat­ed pro­fes­sions such as at­tor­neys, doc­tors, nurs­es, teach­ers and pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers.

Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert raised con­cerns that the of­fence of “wound­ing with in­tent” ex­clud­ed a per­son from be­ing able to ben­e­fit from this law.

Im­bert ar­gued, “Un­law­ful wound­ing is far too wide. It will range from very mi­nor wound­ing to se­ri­ous wound­ing.

“What’s wound­ing? It is you’re break­ing the der­mis or the epi­der­mis. That’s it. You’re break­ing the skin. That’s what wound­ing is. And the whole point, the point that was made by my col­leagues, is that if some­body is guilty of a very mi­nor, very mi­nor of­fence of wound­ing, this bill will ex­clude that per­son from seek­ing to have their record ex­punged.”

How­ev­er, in wind­ing up the de­bate, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie would not budge on that par­tic­u­lar of­fence.

“The Of­fences Against Per­sons Act in Sec­tion 12, it pro­vides for a de­f­i­n­i­tion of what is un­law­ful wound­ing. And this is what it says. Shoot­ing, wound­ing with in­tent, the of­fence is pun­ish­able by 15 years. Wound­ing it­self, spec­trum, it goes up to five years. No apolo­gies for hav­ing this where it is in this piece of leg­is­la­tion.”

The Crim­i­nal Records (Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of Of­fend­ers) Board, to be ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent, will com­prise be­tween sev­en and nine mem­bers drawn from a range of pro­fes­sion­al back­grounds, in­clud­ing the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty, men­tal health sec­tor, law en­force­ment and civ­il so­ci­ety. It is ex­pect­ed to in­clude a chair­man with ju­di­cial or ex­ten­sive le­gal ex­pe­ri­ence, crim­i­nal law ex­perts, a psy­chi­a­trist or psy­chol­o­gist, a crim­i­nol­o­gy or so­cial work spe­cial­ist, a se­nior po­lice rep­re­sen­ta­tive and per­sons in­volved in re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and hu­man rights ad­vo­ca­cy.

The bill will now go to the Sen­ate.