Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan today called for an abolition of current juvenile offences such as wandering and truancy and he urged humane alternatives to incarceration.
He was speaking today at a consultation on the draft Juvenile Justice Bill 2015 at the Pegasus Hotel.
His presentation follows:
I want to welcome all of you to this first of three (3) consultations on the Juvenile Justice Bill 2015. There will be two others, one in Berbice and the other in Essequibo.
I want to especially commend the efforts of UNICEF, and both its representatives Ms Gittens and Ms Marianne Flach, and others for seeing this Bill to this stage.
This Draft Juvenile Justice Bill we are considering today is a comprehensive document which I believe will effectively tackle the significant issues related to juvenile justice in Guyana. However, we cannot move forward without first considering the very important views of the stakeholders of this Bill – you, the members of the Public. I hope that this consultation proves fruitful and also hope that the consultations to come in Berbice and Essequibo are equally so.
The journey that brought this Bill here, in my view, commenced since 2004. The then Guyana Government, of which I was a member, had delivered its first Report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child. Following that, the Committee then made a number of recommendations urging that these be implemented as early as possible. These recommendations included:
- raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 years;
- ensuring that those persons below the age of majority, that is below 18 years, not be tried as adults, but be given adequate special protection;
- amending Guyana’s Juvenile Offenders Act, originally enacted since 1931, to reflect international juvenile justice standards in accordance with the Beijing Rules and the Riyadh Guidelines;
- ensuring that children below 18 charged with offences are provided with free legal assistance;
- establishing separate remand homes for boys and girls;
- improving training programmes for professionals involved, among others.
Nothing happened for two years. Then in 2006, UNICEF initiating and with Ministry of Culture Youth and Sport supporting, we had an expert Bruce Abramson articulating the need for a new Juvenile Justice Act in a policy paper entitled “A New Juvenile Delinquency Act for Guyana? A decision for Policy Makers in 2006”
Things moved a little faster after Mr Abramson’s persuasive arguments, to the extent that by 2007 a Draft was completed. But then it got stuck for some seven (7) years. Dr Frank Anthony, then Minister of Youth and Sports, encouraged revisions of the 2007 Draft with the support of UNICEF in 2014.
In August 2015, a multi-stakeholder meeting at the Ministry of Public Security decided that consultations should be held for further revisions to be accommodated and then the Bill should head for Cabinet for approval; and, once that was obtained, it will be transmitted to the National Assembly for passage there.
I wish to say that we are on our way.
In Guyana we almost always seek guidance from England as to what direction we want our justice system to go. Youth justice system is just an aspect of this. And once we step back into recent history, the very famous Home Office Secretary of England, Jack Straw’s utterances shine some light as to who we were imitating. He encapsulated rather accurately what we wanted here in Guyana concerning juvenile justice reform. In 1998 he had argued in a White Paper that the primary focus of juvenile justice must be the prevention of offending and recidivist behavior. He said then in 1998, making the case for the Crime and Disorder Act of that year:
“The Government wants to see the Youth Justice System make a real difference to the lives of the children and young people from offending. Too many young people begin offending at a very young age. Too many continue offending in their adult lives. Young people who offend damage their own lives. They cause disruption, harm and distress to others. Preventing offenders is in the best interests of all concerned and should be a priority for all those working within the Youth Justice System.”
This new Government of Guyana wants to see an Act which reflects a modern philosophy of juvenile justice, which strengthens the justice system for juveniles, and makes it responsive to them and their situation.
Moreover, we want to see an Act which provides a framework where professionals are in the forefront supporting juveniles rather than police and prison wardens.
We want to minimize the harsh punishment meted out to our young offenders which then stigmatize them for life. We want to maximize their education, their rehabilitation and their reintegration into society.
Additional and central to these policy innovations which inform this Draft Bill is the search for effective alternatives to prison. Jails and secure confinement are not the place where the substantial majority of our young people who have committed offences should be.
In this day and age we have to provide a humane alternative to incarceration for the young law-breakers. This certainly will assist in helping them avoid falling deeper into a life of crime, and helping our country from becoming a jailhouse nation.
This Draft Bill, I am proud to say, makes provision for this alternative. It is referred to as ‘Diversion’ in Part 2, Clauses 6 to 12 particularly, among others. It means diverting the juvenile away from formal Court procedures to informal procedures and includes restorative measures to deal with a juvenile alleged to have committed an offence.
As Clause 9 adumbrates, diversions could range from an apology to compulsory attendance of a specified vocational or education centre; or from community service, to compensation to the victim in an amount which the juvenile’s family can afford. Even at the stage before commencement of proceedings the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) or Police Officer, can consider warnings and referrals – Clause 4.
Other alternative sanctions or diversions can come from the newly created Office of Director of Youth. It would be up to the creativity and imaginativeness of this office to come up with more innovative diversions which of course must ensure the young offender is dealt with in a manner appropriate to his/her wellbeing and proportionate to the circumstances and the offence.
Another very important principle which this Draft Bill deals with is the age of criminal responsibility. Should it be increased from its present ten (10) years to twelve (12) years or should it go up even further to sixteen (16) years? This consultation exercise will help in letting us policy-makers be informed as to how the people think.
I support the exclusion of status offences in this Draft Bill. They are there in the existing Juvenile Offenders Act. Status Offences are those offences which criminalize behavioral problems of children such as wandering, vagrancy, truancy, runaways. These are acts which often are the result of psychological or socio-economic problems. It is particularly a matter of concern that girls and street children are often victims of this kind of criminalization. These acts are not considered criminal when committed by adults. There is an inherent injustice there, and discrimination on grounds of age.
And on this score I must mention that there are a number of children who were sentenced to the New Opportunity Corps (NOC) for the offence of wandering …30 of them as of August 2015! These offences must be abolished. We must enhance humaneness and equity by reducing the use of secure confinement. We must not betray young people by continuing the imposition of custodial sentences. This must only be an exercise of last resort, where nothing else is left to protect the public.
The Government is aware that this revolution in juvenile justice, which this Draft Bill will inaugurate, is going to require a number of changes and a huge amount of resources.
The changes must include mindset changes of the professionals presently engaged; and, what I call ‘certain organizational dynamics’ which exist in institutions dealing with youth justice. Support will be given to have these changes made as quickly as possible.
Also, resources must be found to establish the placement facilities which will support this new juvenile justice regime. Resources to staff these facilities, resources for the Director of Youth and his staff, and the Juvenile Justice Committee, will cause Mr Jordan, our Finance Minister, some concern. Re-training of Policemen, Prosecutors and Magistrates and even Judges will see expenditures rise.
But for our young people unfortunately involved, most if not all of whom are products of severely dysfunctional families, we must invest today in realistic, rational, sensitive and supportive interventions to reap the dividends of more secure families, safer communities, and ultimately a stable nation tomorrow.
As the United Nationals Committee on the Rights of the Child since 1995 noted, “unless the chain is broken, there is reduced hope for the individual child, let alone the rest of the family and future generations”
An ideal society is a utopia, it will not be achieved. But that does not mean we must not keep trying to improve the one we have. Otherwise, the one we have may rapidly disintegrate.
Let us therefore proceed to do something for our young people. To “educate, rehabilitate and reintegrate” them certainly is not utopian. It is most certainly achievable.
This Bill is a grand leap forward in that direction. Let your consultations here today further improve and refine it.