To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

In­tro­duc­ing the Bail Amend­ment Bill 2010, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan was sen­si­ble enough to call out clear­ly one of the crit­i­cal pro­vi­sions of the new leg­is­la­tion be­ing of­fered for de­bate, a new pro­vi­sion for de­tain­ing sus­pects for up to five days on sus­pi­cion of a range of crimes.

This is an ex­pan­sion on the statutes of ex­ist­ing law, which on­ly al­lows of­fi­cers to hold a sus­pect for two days be­fore for­mal­ly charg­ing them with an of­fence. The first and most crit­i­cal ques­tion is what, ex­act­ly, do po­lice of­fi­cers ex­pect to do with three ex­tra days that they haven't been able to do in two, in ad­di­tion to what­ev­er time was spent in­ves­ti­gat­ing the sus­pect be­fore­hand.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ar­gues that two days isn't enough time to build a case strong enough to prof­fer a charge, but that pre­sup­pos­es that every per­son tak­en in­to cus­tody is the sub­ject of in­ves­ti­ga­tion from the time he is held.

But the larg­er num­ber of ar­rests should be sup­port­ed by prop­er case­work pri­or to ar­rest, should they not? Clear­ly, there is need for greater pow­ers in­vest­ed in front­line po­lice of­fi­cers in en­gag­ing the steady rise in crime, but there must al­so be bal­ance be­tween such the li­cence grant­ed to the po­lice in the pur­suit of law en­force­ment and cit­i­zen's rights un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion.

This el­e­ment of the new Bill es­sen­tial­ly strips the right to be heard in a court of law and to be of­fered bail from crim­i­nal sus­pects for a full five days. That kind of im­po­si­tion on the pub­lic's en­shrined rights should not pass with­out a full, de­tailed and vig­or­ous de­bate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

This ex­pan­sion of the law is be­ing con­sid­ered for some crimes that clear­ly de­serve more ro­bust in­ves­ti­ga­tion, in­clud­ing rape, armed vi­o­lence and drug deal­ing, but in con­sid­er­ing this trou­bling re­duc­tion in in­di­vid­ual rights, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan must be care­ful to en­sure that this new pro­vi­sion ap­plies in on­ly the most se­vere cas­es.

It's un­clear why such a dras­tic cur­tail­ing of per­son­al rights should ap­ply in cas­es in­volv­ing mo­tor ve­hi­cle theft or the read­i­ly mis­in­ter­pret­ed cir­cum­stance of "per­vert­ing or de­feat­ing the course of pub­lic jus­tice."

Nei­ther of these is ac­cept­able, but they can't re­al­is­ti­cal­ly be as­so­ci­at­ed with vi­o­lent crime. In for­mu­lat­ing and pre­sent­ing this Bill, AG Ram­lo­gan must hold in mind not on­ly the in­tend­ed fate of crim­i­nals caught in the pro­posed five-day in­ves­ti­ga­tion time frame but al­so what hap­pens to in­no­cent peo­ple who end up de­tained by the pro­posed le­gal statute.

Which in­vites the ques­tion: Where will these sus­pects will be held for five days? The in­fra­struc­ture of in­car­cer­a­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go is al­ready ap­proach­ing sat­u­ra­tion, and the cells in the bet­ter-equipped po­lice sta­tions were not con­struct­ed for the pro­posed ex­tend­ed terms of habi­ta­tion.

If of­fi­cers of the law are to hold to the es­sen­tial prin­ci­ple that peo­ple are in­no­cent un­til proven guilty, then the five days that even the most sus­pi­cious among these new longer-termed guests of the State should pro­ceed on the as­sump­tion that those de­tained should be treat­ed as sus­pects, not felons.

That would seem to sug­gest a re­vamp­ing of the first tier of pris­ons in­fra­struc­ture, specif­i­cal­ly the hold­ing cells that will serve as the home of these sus­pects for their near-week-long stay. The five days in the cell of a po­lice sta­tion or any new fa­cil­i­ty be­ing con­sid­ered as a hold­ing space for this new in­flux of sus­pects is not some­thing to be planned af­ter the pass­ing of a bill but should form part of its plan­ning frame­work.

It's like­ly that the Gov­ern­ment views this ini­tia­tive as part of its plans for gang bust­ing, and hopes that more in­ves­ti­ga­tion time will al­low for more cas­es to be brought against young sus­pects iden­ti­fied dur­ing field sweeps.

While the threat of "a five days in the hole" might have some street val­ue, there needs to be more pre­emp­tive think­ing in­vest­ed in the idea of stem­ming gang vi­o­lence with a view to of­fer­ing al­ter­na­tives, in­ter­ven­tions and more fo­cused penal­ties aimed at pre­vent­ing "thug life" from gain­ing trac­tion with im­pres­sion­able young minds.