?ROSE­MARIE SANT

The head of the lo­cal Ro­man Catholic Church Arch­bish­op Joseph Har­ris is lead­ing a pe­ti­tion seek­ing to "free" re­mand pris­on­ers who have been be­hind bars longer than the max­i­mum prison term they would have got­ten if they had been found guilty of their crimes.

The pe­ti­tion which has been cir­cu­lat­ed to priests and parish ad­min­is­tra­tors across the coun­try re­cent­ly aims to at­tract suf­fi­cient sig­na­tures to trig­ger mer­cy for hun­dreds of pris­on­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those charged with mi­nor of­fences. A re­mand pris­on­er is one who has been charged with an of­fence but is await­ing tri­al. Many of them are on bail but are un­able to meet the re­quire­ments to ob­tain bail.

This year has been de­clared the "Ju­bilee Year of Mer­cy" by Pope Fran­cis and it is in this con­text that Har­ris is seek­ing Pres­i­den­tial Par­don for some in­car­cer­at­ed on re­mand.

In a let­ter sent to priests and parish ad­min­is­tra­tors dat­ed April 7, Har­ris in­formed his cler­gy that he had writ­ten to the gov­ern­ment with the re­quest and asked that the priests read a let­ter which he sent to the con­gre­ga­tion to "sen­si­tise their parish­ioners about this cause."He has al­so asked that parish­ioners sign forms "en­dors­ing this pe­ti­tion and re­turn them to Arch­bish­op's House be­tween Pen­te­cost and Cor­pus Christi." That is be­tween May 15 and May 26.

The let­ter was read out in some Catholic church­es last week­end and parish­ioners were asked to sign the pe­ti­tion as they were leav­ing. But the re­sponse was "mixed."Some parish­ioners said they need­ed time to "think about what was be­ing asked of them."

But many oth­ers were in sup­port of the ini­tia­tive, ex­press­ing the view that it was on­ly right that we be "mer­ci­ful" to those in need of it.

The GML En­ter­prise Desk un­der­stands that the let­ter from Har­ris came out of a meet­ing of the cler­gy at which he is said to have ex­pressed con­cern that there are sev­er­al young men and women who have been in prison for years, in some in­stances more than a decade await­ing their mat­ters be­ing heard, and when their mat­ters are heard, he said, some of them may be sen­tenced to an ad­di­tion­al five years in prison.

Har­ris ar­gues that by "no fault of their own" these young men and women would have al­ready spent sig­nif­i­cant­ly more time than the sen­tence im­posed, and in this year of mer­cy he be­lieves that hav­ing al­ready served their time once the sen­tence is passed they should be al­lowed to go free.

The GML En­ter­prise Desk was told there was a unan­i­mous vote and that the cler­gy found the ini­tia­tive to get parish­ioners to sign the pe­ti­tion as "a favourable thing to do," since it was felt it "con­cre­tised the year of mer­cy" in this ju­ris­dic­tion.

It was felt that giv­en the slow pace of crim­i­nal jus­tice in the coun­try it was "in­hu­mane" for peo­ple who had com­mit­ted mi­nor crimes to be in prison wait­ing more than ten years to get a tri­al.

Har­ris said the Catholic Church is a "Cor­po­rate cit­i­zen in the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go" and de­sires a "na­tion­al rec­on­cil­i­a­tion among our peo­ple," and in this year of Mer­cy it de­sires from the Lord for our coun­try "a na­tion­al procla­ma­tion of mer­cy."

Har­ris is ask­ing the au­thor­i­ties that a "re­view be un­der­tak­en of those who are serv­ing prison sen­tences and who are found to be wor­thy of par­don and mer­cy, be grant­ed their lib­er­ty," and that "those charged for mi­nor of­fences and have been held in re­mand for a long time, some of whom if and when sen­tenced would have al­ready served that time in re­mand, that sim­i­lar con­sid­er­a­tion of mer­cy may be af­ford­ed them."

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj said the coun­try is on the "verge of hav­ing a bro­ken crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem."

Ma­haraj said it was un­ac­cept­able that peo­ple are in prison charged for bail­able of­fences but are un­able to get bail be­cause they come from "fam­i­lies who live be­low the pover­ty line and can­not af­ford it. That is un­ac­cept­able," he said.He said that is tan­ta­mount to "them plead­ing guilty and serv­ing time and when their mat­ter is tried and they are sen­tenced they have to serve time again, that is an in­jus­tice."

AG: Wel­come ini­tia­tive

Con­tact­ed for com­ment At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi told the GML En­ter­prise Desk that the gov­ern­ment "wel­comes the sup­port of his Grace in this very crit­i­cal ven­ture and we wel­come his con­cern."

The AG said he had raised sim­i­lar con­cerns at the re­cent con­sul­ta­tion on the prison sys­tem in T&T. At that con­sul­ta­tion the AG had ex­pressed con­cern that it costs the state al­most $50 m a month to main­tain the 2,235 pris­on­ers in re­mand yard.

He ques­tioned then "how is a poor man with no land able to get bail? Does he stay in jail for a longer pe­ri­od of time for ob­scene lan­guage or main­te­nance, or is it time we ac­cept cash de­posits?"

He said there are over 2,000 pris­on­ers on re­mand yard and there is need to dis­ag­gre­gate be­tween crime and sen­tences, the is­sue of clear­ing the back­log of cas­es and those lan­guish­ing in the prison sys­tem "we in­tend to deal with the is­sue head on." Sev­er­al fac­tors would, how­ev­er, have to be tak­en in­to ac­count he said in­clud­ing a thor­ough analy­sis "and rec­om­men­da­tion by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions in ap­pro­pri­ate cas­es where par­don may ap­ply."

Ob­vi­ous­ly he said it will not ap­ply to those charged with se­ri­ous crimes and mur­der. For those whom it may ap­ply, he said, process must be fol­lowed this in­volves "the Mer­cy Com­mit­tee, and rec­om­men­da­tions from the DPP. But ul­ti­mate­ly he said "His Grace is in sync with the gov­ern­ment on the is­sue."

Break­down of pris­on­ers

There are cur­rent­ly 2,235 peo­ple on re­mand yard that is just over 60 per cent of the prison pop­u­la­tion which cur­rent­ly stands at over 3,400.

A break­down of re­mand yard pris­on­ers in­di­cate that 42 per cent of the pris­on­ers are on mur­der charges, that cal­cu­lates to 939, 11 per cent or 246 per­sons are on drug pos­ses­sion charges, 7 per cent or 156 peo­ple have been charged with sex­u­al of­fences and 12 per cent or 268 peo­ple have been charged for less­er of­fences in­clud­ing child main­te­nance and traf­fic of­fences, com­ing to a to­tal of 1,609 pris­on­ers.

Some 28 per cent of re­mand yard pris­on­ers or 625 were un­ac­count­ed for in the sta­tis­tics.Al Rawi said many of these in­mates have been in prison for over 10 years in some cas­es 11 and 15 years wait­ing for their mat­ters to be heard.

He said it costs $20,000 to $25,000 a month to main­tain some­one who may not have been able to pay a $12,000 fine, "it's like bounc­ing a rub­ber ball off a con­crete block" he said. In ad­di­tion he said the state spends $80 mil­lion dol­lars a year mov­ing re­mand yard pris­on­ers to and from courts across T&T.

The es­ti­mat­ed cost in­cludes hav­ing a pros­e­cu­tor as­signed to each case, a po­lice of­fi­cer, health costs and oth­ers.If the 12 per cent on less­er of­fences were to ben­e­fit from the re­quest by the Catholic Church that would be rough­ly 270 pris­on­ers, there would be a sav­ing of $6.75 mil­lion per month.

Al Rawi had told the na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tion on prison re­form that "every sin­gle dol­lar mat­ters in our coun­try, there must be val­ue for mon­ey con­sid­er­a­tions."

He said he was "pleased that some­one oth­er than the Gov­ern­ment is look­ing at this way for­ward. This is not im­pos­si­ble to achieve, I am pleased his Grace is think­ing the same way we are."