Govt mulls alternative sentencing to reduce prison overcrowding

TIMES INT'L

The Legal Affairs Ministry is in consultation with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) on developing alternative sentencing as part of measures to reduce overcrowding in the prisons.

Legal Affairs Minister and Attorney General Basil Williams said the initiative was “something still in the pipeline”, but the Government would be considering “alternative sentencing, pre-trial liberty and considerations like that” as it sought to address overcrowding in prisons, the Government Information Agency (GINA) said in a release.

“The whole idea is to try to weed out these offences that are clogging up (the prisons). Sometimes some people who are there for a six-month sentence could have had some other sentence,” Minister Williams explained.

A report from the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the Camp Street Prison riots, which led to the death of 17 inmates in March, cited overcrowding as a major factor. The CoI Report noted that there was a huge disparity in the ratio of remand to convicted prisoners. It went on to call for more enforcement of the Bail Act.

Bail is a constitutional right afforded to prisoners with the exception of murder, treason or the possibility of the accused being a flight risk.

In the meantime, the Government has allocated G$25 million to facilitate Night Court sessions as an immediate measure aimed at reducing the backlog in the judicial system, and particularly overcrowding in prisons.

Minister Williams noted that for the Night Court to be successful, it must target criminal cases with likely sentences of between three months to three years, “So that we won’t have people with these offences clogging up the prisons.”

Meanwhile, the Public Security Ministry’s Citizen Security Strengthening Programme (CSSP) will be conducting a study to evaluate alternatives to incarceration. Funding for that project was acquired from the IDB.

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