Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

At­tor­ney Jagdeo Singh be­lieves the sim­plest so­lu­tion to en­sure an al­most overnight drop in crime is to put an elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing bracelet on all those charged with an of­fence and on bail.

Singh made the sug­ges­tion at Mon­day’s UNC crim­i­nal jus­tice re­form con­sul­ta­tion in Barataria. He spoke along­side at­tor­ney De­vesh Ma­haraj, UNC po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad–Bisses­sar and Barataria/San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein.

Singh said T&T has a se­vere­ly—bor­der­ing on mor­tal­ly—wound­ed crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. “We need on­ly to look at what’s hap­pen­ing in Haiti to un­der­stand if we don’t fix this sys­tem, that’s where we’re head­ing,” he claimed. Singh, not­ing the over 575 mur­ders in a coun­try of 1.5 mil­lion, said so­lu­tions start with de­tec­tion. Ho­sein said in 2022—the year of the high­est mur­der rate of 603 mur­ders—the de­tec­tion rate was 79.

Ac­cord­ing to Singh, so­ci­ety can’t be fixed if peo­ple are walk­ing around un­de­tect­ed, so po­lice must be equipped.

Dis­miss­ing giv­ing peo­ple bail with­out a cor­re­spond­ing oblig­a­tion to so­ci­ety, Singh added, “The sim­plest so­lu­tion to an overnight drop in crime is you put an elec­tron­ic bracelet on every­one who’s charged for an of­fence and on bail.” Not­ing sta­tis­tics show­ing vi­o­lent crimes are com­mit­ted by re­peat of­fend­ers Singh said, “No one wakes up and com­mits a se­ries of mur­ders for the first time in his life. Every time he com­mits a crime and is re­leased on bail, he’s fur­ther em­bold­ened to com­mit more crime.”

He added, “So the eas­i­est, quick­est way is to put an elec­tron­ic bracelet on him—mod­i­fy the term of his bail and pre­vent him from con­sort­ing with known crim­i­nals, so when the po­lice see 10 elec­tron­ic bracelets as­sem­bled in one room, you know what is tak­ing place there: it is a con­fed­er­a­cy of crim­i­nals meet­ing to de­cide what they go­ing to do!”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Singh gave im­me­di­ate so­lu­tions re­gard­ing elec­tron­ic bracelets, a law for which the UNC passed in 2011. She claimed the PNM took years to im­ple­ment it, sug­gest­ing it may be be­cause they were de­cid­ing who to give the con­tract to for sup­ply­ing the bracelets.

Away from crime, Singh claimed the dis­tri­b­u­tion pow­er for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals is “as­ton­ish­ing­ly con­cen­trat­ed” in “one com­pa­ny” and it may come to a point where “every Panadol and Vicks tin” is sup­plied by that com­pa­ny. He felt it was time to strength­en Fair Trade Com­mis­sion law, as there seems to be an un­will­ing­ness to en­force it.

Ma­haraj, not­ing com­plaints of phar­ma­cy mo­nop­o­lies, said when the UNC en­ters gov­ern­ment that needs to be ad­dressed im­me­di­ate­ly with an ex­am­i­na­tion of why parts of the law aren’t pro­claimed.

“We need a more ag­gres­sive ap­proach to deal with these com­pa­nies, or the strong will get stronger,” he added.

Singh felt that the cor­ner­stone of the rule of law is pub­lic-spir­it­ed lawyers who aren’t will­ing to tol­er­ate bad ad­min­is­tra­tive be­hav­iour with­out tak­ing gov­ern­ments to court.

“You may hate us as lawyers, find we charge too much, we’re snob­bish and up­pi­ty. Some of us may be guilty of all of that, but it’s re­peat­ed­ly said in Port-of-Spain it’s on­ly the op­po­si­tion lawyers, af­fil­i­at­ed with the UNC, who are will­ing to chal­lenge the Gov­ern­ment,” he added.

Say­ing UNC lawyers, “don’t tol­er­ate bad be­hav­iour,” Singh said he had al­most 100 cas­es pend­ing against the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er. Singh said if it weren’t for the spir­it of lawyers like him­self, Ma­haraj, Anand Ram­lo­gan, Ger­ald Ramdeen and oth­ers, “pub­lic ser­vice and ad­min­is­tra­tion would run roughshod over us.” Ma­haraj al­so called for at­ten­tion to the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry, where he said lawyers are “go­ing crazy” with the new De­cem­ber dead­line for an­nu­al re­turns and oth­er fil­ings in­stead of Jan­u­ary 2025.