Pun­ish­ment of crim­i­nals must be swift and se­vere.

Most of us can agree on that, but in or­der to con­trol crime and main­tain low­er lev­els of vi­o­lence, we must al­so strive for restora­tive jus­tice.

In our cur­rent crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, we tend to equate jus­tice with pun­ish­ment. When a crim­i­nal serves time this gives them the im­pres­sion that they have paid their debt to so­ci­ety.

Pun­ish­ment is es­sen­tial but it does not ad­dress the oth­er im­por­tant needs of vic­tims of hor­ren­dous crimes that oc­cur in Trinidad on a reg­u­lar ba­sis. It does not al­ways re­store their loss­es and they are still left with many unan­swered ques­tions. Pun­ish­ment of crim­i­nals does not re­lieve their vic­tim’s fears and in­se­cu­ri­ties nor does it help them make sense of their loss or heal their wounds.

Most of us can agree that in our cur­rent sit­u­a­tion that crime and vi­o­lence are ex­plod­ing out-of-con­trol in the streets of this na­tion.

Most al­so agree that what the cur­rent crop of lead­ers are do­ing about it is def­i­nite­ly not work­ing.

We are fear­ful for our lives and we have good rea­son to be. Many of us have left the coun­try in pur­suit of our dreams and are afraid to re­turn. We know that our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is bro­ken, but trag­i­cal­ly we don’t know how to fix it and get it work­ing for the ben­e­fit of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.

We must be­gin fix­ing our bro­ken sys­tem by pur­su­ing first and fore­most crim­i­nal jus­tice whose pri­ma­ry fo­cus is on the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of of­fend­ers through rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with vic­tims and the com­mu­ni­ty at large.

Si­mon Wright

Ch­agua­nas

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