The Restorative Justice Centre of Guyana was launched on Thursday morning in a ceremony attended by government ministers, Joint Services personnel, and members of the diplomatic corps, a release from the Guyana Police Force stated.
It explained that Restorative Justice, as described by the Canadian judicial system, is “an approach to justice that seeks to repair harm by providing an opportunity for those harmed and those who take responsibility for the harm to communicate about and address their needs in the aftermath of a crime.” The system is founded on the belief that crime violates people’s rights and relationships and principles of respect, empathy and inclusion. The approach also seeks to mitigate the prison population and avoid recidivism.
The Centre, as well as a pilot programme, was launched under the Support for the Criminal Justice System programme (SCJS) of the Ministry of Legal Affairs. The ceremony took place at the Guyana Police Force Officers Training Centre located at Camp and Young streets, Kingston, Georgetown.
According to the release, the Support for the Criminal Justice System (SCJS) programme is a partnership between the Government of Guyana through the Ministry of Legal Affairs and the Inter-American Development Bank. The programme, it said, addresses the challenge of overcrowding conditions in prisons by focussing on two specific problems: (i) the over-reliance by the criminal justice system on custodial sentences; and (ii) the over-use of pre-trial detention.
Further, since its inception, the programme has employed several measures and embarked on numerous activities, culminating in addressing the general problem of overcrowding conditions in Guyana’s penitentiaries.
The establishing of a Restorative Justice (RJ Centre) is one such activity.
The feature address was delivered by Attorney General, and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall.
