Drop­ping the “net” on crim­i­nals by re­strict­ing bail ac­cess.

That’s what Gov­ern­ment hopes to achieve with to­mor­row’s de­bate on the Bail (Amend­ment) bill for which Par­lia­ment has been re­called fol­low­ing the re­cent crime cri­sis.

“Pas­sage of this bill is cru­cial at this point as the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er ap­proached Gov­ern­ment in the week of Ju­ly 15 say­ing now is the time to have the bill passed ur­gent­ly as part of the strat­e­gy of de­stroy­ing the re­cent up­surge in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty,”

A glim­mer of hope emerged last night af­ter the Op­po­si­tion cau­cused on the bill.

UNC Deputy Leader David Lee, con­firm­ing there are is­sues the Op­po­si­tion wants to thrash out on cer­tain claus­es in the de­bate. He added, “But the door’s not closed on the bill—it’s nev­er closed with this Op­po­si­tion.”

Par­lia­ment which had been on re­cess from ear­ly Ju­ly was put on no­tice last week—in the height of the crime cri­sis—for de­bate on the Bail bill to­mor­row.

Sev­er­al MPs who were over­seas re­turned and the Op­po­si­tion will have about 12 mem­bers present.

But that may not in­clude Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar who is over­seas on va­ca­tion.

The sev­en clause bill de­bars bail for 120 days for peo­ple who have charges or con­vic­tions on se­ri­ous crimes rang­ing from rape to gang is­sues.

A new clause al­lows cul­prits to ap­proach the court for bail in “ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances.” Al Rawi said the ac­cused will have to prove they should be giv­en bail.

The bill re­quires Op­po­si­tion sup­port for pas­sage. It was passed in the Sen­ate on June 12 with Gov­ern­ment and In­de­pen­dent sup­port.

But the Op­po­si­tion did not sup­port it.

Al Rawi said the bill worked well un­der the UNC’s tenure—when it de­barred bail for 60 days—and un­der the PNM’s term when the Spe­cial An­ti Crime unit (SAUTT) was in force.

“The UNC has no log­i­cal rea­son for not sup­port­ing this. I’m ab­solute­ly sure sta­tis­tics can show there are a num­ber of peo­ple of se­ri­ous in­ter­est to the po­lice who are out on bail and who need to be afraid if they’re caught a sec­ond time,” he said.

“The crime sit­u­a­tion TT’s see­ing now is the ef­fect of a se­ri­ous se­quence of events con­cern­ing the crim­i­nal el­e­ments—re­ac­tionary push­back to the lev­el of the pres­sure they’re un­der and that in­cludes last week’s deaths of re­put­ed un­der­world fig­ures (Vaugh “Sand­man” Mieres and Aki­ni “Dole” Adams),” said Al Rawi.

“So while we’re al­so to push back hard di­rect­ly via po­lice, the miss­ing el­e­ment is the abil­i­ty to have a stronger Bail Act in place to cause a cool­ing-off pe­ri­od. That sce­nario oc­curred pre­vi­ous­ly when the Act was in force over 2006/08. But those pow­ers aren’t in place cur­rent­ly. It’s cru­cial for law en­force­ment to have this to as­sist them to sup­press crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty by deny­ing bail to peo­ple known to them. If it isn’t passed, all ef­forts will be stymied,”

UNC’s Lee said the UNC will pro­pose amend­ments, “Be­cause we don’t feel the bill will do any­thing. But we hope the Gov­ern­ment will work with us to pro­duce bet­ter laws. One of the things we’ll sug­gest is to have a stat­ed time frame—three or six months—by which Gov­ern­ment should re­port on how many guns have been re­cov­ered and how many peo­ple were in­car­cer­at­ed as a re­sult of the bill.”

“Our main con­cern al­so is Clause Sev­en where peo­ple on charges, won’t ac­cess bail for 120 days for an­oth­er charge. That sit­u­a­tion could be ma­nip­u­lat­ed. The gov­ern­ment must al­so give the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er fund­ing and oth­er tools that’ll give him ‘teeth’ to fight crime,” Lee said.