KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley be­lieves the Bail Bill will put a ma­jor dent in the rap sheet of those com­mit­ting the most vi­o­lent of crimes. He al­so be­lieves it will send a strong mes­sage to crim­i­nals that par­lia­men­tar­i­ans are do­ing their part to en­sure they can no longer ter­rorise law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.

While mak­ing his con­tri­bu­tions in sup­port of the Bail Amend­ment (2024) Bill in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Dr Row­ley stressed the im­por­tance of as­sist­ing the po­lice in putting pres­sure on those crim­i­nals.

He said, “While the leader of the Op­po­si­tion made a big point in say­ing, ‘Why are we com­ing with it again and again?’ It is be­cause we gen­uine­ly be­lieve that this bill will as­sist the po­lice to at least put a bit of pres­sure on those who have cho­sen crime as a way of life in this coun­try. The po­lice are the ones who ask the par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to put this mea­sure in place to deal, not with every cit­i­zen, but with a small num­ber of peo­ple who are lit­er­al­ly ter­ror­is­ing the pop­u­la­tion.  “The pur­pose is to pre­vent peo­ple from us­ing the good­will of the pop­u­la­tion to ter­rorise the pop­u­la­tion. Be­cause the crim­i­nals know ex­act­ly what the law per­mits and what it doesn’t per­mit, they know the lo­gis­tics of ap­ply­ing the law to them, and they have no re­gard for the dis­com­fort that they’re caus­ing for the wider na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion.”

The Bail Amend­ed Bill now al­lows mur­der ac­cused to ap­ply for bail and iden­ti­fies se­ri­ous of­fences that con­sti­tute a need for bail to be de­nied. Row­ley ex­plained that the amend­ments made to the bill would not mean every­one found guilty of a vi­o­lent crime would be au­to­mat­i­cal­ly de­nied bail.

How­ev­er, he said there would be in­stances where ju­di­cial of­fi­cers would have the au­thor­i­ty to de­ny bail.

Dr Row­ley said, “The of­fences are oc­cur­ring very fre­quent­ly, and there will be a num­ber of in­stances where this pro­vi­sion will be found to be suit­able on a case-by-case ba­sis. It doesn’t say that every­body who com­mits a vi­o­lent crime will end up be­ing de­nied bail, but there are in­stances that the ju­di­cial of­fi­cers will say to them­selves and to the pop­u­la­tion you re­quire to be kept here for a while.”

Dr Row­ley was al­so hope­ful the bill would help speed up tri­als. He said, “The most im­por­tant thing I will like to see out of this bill when it is re-en­act­ed is the ex­tra­dit­ing of tri­als in the coun­try’s courts. The crim­i­nals must know once you are ap­pre­hend­ed, you are on a fast track to mak­ing a jail if you are guilty and to get back to your free­dom if you’re in­no­cent.”

“When we pass this, if it is still busi­ness as usu­al in the courts where to­day’s mat­ter will be heard in the next five, ten years, then we would have ac­com­plished noth­ing. But if, on the oth­er hand, we man­age to ex­pe­dite tri­als and dis­pense jus­tice in a time­ly man­ner, this mea­sure will bring about a sig­nif­i­cant re­lief for the wider pop­u­la­tion.”

He added, “If a per­son is to be de­nied bail, we trust that the rest of the sys­tem, the ju­di­cia­ry, will be cog­nisant of that and the po­lice will be cog­nisant of that, so that when a per­son is de­nied bail for this pre­scribed pe­ri­od, peo­ple at this time in our coun­try fac­ing the crim­i­nal on­slaught will know that we have to walk faster and bet­ter to be able to have the tri­al ex­pe­dit­ed so that a po­si­tion of guilt or in­no­cence can be es­tab­lished in a rea­son­able time­frame hav­ing the ben­e­fit of the per­son hav­ing been de­nied bail for the num­ber of days that the law pro­vides. So, the mat­ter doesn’t end af­ter this law is passed. It puts a re­quire­ment on oth­ers to use it.”

Dr Row­ley al­so said crim­i­nals do not have any fear about com­mit­ting vi­o­lent crimes be­cause of the ease of get­ting bail.

While un­der­scor­ing the frus­tra­tions of po­lice of­fi­cers, he said if you ask any po­lice of­fi­cer what irks them about crim­i­nals get­ting bail, they will say it’s hav­ing to try to ap­pre­hend the same peo­ple for the same crimes, or worse. He said they would call it a “re­volv­ing door.”

Ac­cord­ing to the ex­plana­to­ry notes of the bail bill, the bill seeks to im­pose an en­hanced re­ver­sal of bur­den on peo­ple charged with the of­fences of mur­der and firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences to re­quire such per­sons to show “ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances” to jus­ti­fy the grant­i­ng of bail.

While the Op­po­si­tion leader ques­tioned what these “ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances” were, Dr Row­ley said he be­lieves the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of “ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances” should be left up to the ju­di­cia­ry.