Sixty young prisoners, convicted for non-violent crimes, will be pardoned beginning today, according to President David Granger, who says attention will be paid to developing training programmes to help reintegrate them back into society.
Granger, during an interview with several reporters at the Ministry of the Presidency yesterday, announced that the amnesty, granted to male and female prisoners from ages 18 to 25 years, will become an annual feature.
“I have specified that persons who have been convicted for crimes of violence will not be eligible for consideration for amnesty,” he said.
“I believe that young people should be in school, not in jail and I have asked that emphasis be placed on young persons and for petty, non-violent offences and sentences of short duration,” he added.
While stressing that sometimes young men are sent to jail for stealing a cell phone, he expressed hope that those pardoned will “get back into school, get back into work and get on with their lives. They belong in school, home with their families.”
Initially, he explained, he had sought to only extend the amnesty to women prisoners. But he found that there was “a very small number” of women who had actually committed minor offences.”
With regard to reintegrating the convicts back into society, Granger envisioned that the government “will be able to reintegrate them by ensuring that we get them training programmes and they can start to live good lives.” He added, “The longer they stay in prison, the more difficult it would be to rehabilitate them.”
Granger has always expressed concern about the number of youths who are imprisoned, particularly for minor offences. In an interview with Stabroek News in 2013, Granger, the then opposition leader, had said the large number of youths who make up the country’s prison population was a cause for “serious concern” and the issue ought to be given top priority. His position was in response to a statement by the Director of Prisons that 75% of inmates were young people. He also linked early imprisonment to hard core criminality.
He had posited that the large amount of money that is being spent to maintain each prisoner could be better spent on creating avenues, which would benefit young people and steer them away from a life of crime.
Granger observed that it might have been a case where many of them were on remand, which means they haven’t been convicted, while some might have been incarcerated for misdemeanors or offences such as the use of narcotics.
He recommended then that some other form of non-custodial punishment, such as community service, should be considered for persons incarcerated for offences like narcotics possession.
Pardon for child killer
Meanwhile, the decision by former president Donald Ramotar to pardon child killer Ravindra Deo does not sit well with Granger. Asked for his views on the decision, which was one of Ramotar’s final acts before his PPP/C’s loss at the elections was announced, Granger said while there is nothing in the constitution which prevented the former president from granting the pardon, “there should be something in his conscience which would have told him that this is not the way to go.” Deo, now 39, was convicted for the murder of eight-year-old Vishnu Bhim 21 years ago. The child was on his way to school when he was kidnapped and taken to the backlands of La Bonne Intention, where he was bound, gagged and murdered. A note had been sent to his parents requesting a ransom of $1 million for his safe return.
Deo was found guilty by a jury in December, 1995 and sentenced to death by Justice Claudette Singh. His sentence was later commuted to life in prison.
