sto­ries by PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher

@guardian.co.tt

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi says al­most 25 per cent of the coun­try’s prison pop­u­la­tion could be grant­ed free­dom due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

He made the com­ment dur­ing yes­ter­day’s vir­tu­al COVID-19 me­dia brief­ing, as he con­firmed 121 pris­on­ers had al­ready been grant­ed free­dom.

Al-Rawi said out of a to­tal of 3,959 in­mates in the sys­tem, 957 of them, spread across eight cat­e­gories, had met the po­ten­tial cri­te­ria to be sent home.

He said nu­mer­ous hear­ings on the re­lease of the pris­on­ers, in­volv­ing the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons, Reg­is­trar of the Supreme Court, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty had been heard be­fore Jus­tice Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds be­tween April 2 and April 16.

The AG broke down the cat­e­gories and re­lat­ed num­bers as fol­lows:

Cat­e­go­ry 1: Per­sons con­vict­ed of sum­ma­ry of­fences — 84 in­mates.

Cat­e­go­ry 2: Per­sons con­vict­ed sum­mar­i­ly of in­dictable of­fences — 62 in­mates.

Cat­e­go­ry 3: Per­sons con­vict­ed of in­dictable of­fences — one in­mate.

Cat­e­go­ry 4: Chil­dren con­vict­ed of sum­ma­ry and in­dictable of­fences — 33 in­mates.

Cat­e­go­ry 5: Per­sons charged with sum­ma­ry of­fences but un­able to ac­cess bail — 137 in­mates.

Cat­e­go­ry 6: Chil­dren charged with sum­ma­ry and in­dictable of­fences, in­clud­ing those who were con­vict­ed but grant­ed bail pend­ing ap­peal. They all be­ing un­able to ac­cess bail — 16 in­mates.

Cat­e­go­ry 7: Per­sons serv­ing terms of im­pris­on­ment in de­fault of pay­ment of main­te­nance fines — 44 in­mates.

Cat­e­go­ry 8: Per­sons con­vict­ed of sum­ma­ry of­fences, con­vict­ed sum­mar­i­ly or in­dictable of­fences who are now in their fi­nal year of their sen­tence.

The eighth cat­e­go­ry he ex­plained, “was added by way of an amend­ment to the court or­der.” He said 459 per­sons fell in­to that last cat­e­go­ry.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al al­so re­vealed that of the 957 pris­on­ers, the 121 al­ready re­leased ob­tained their free­dom un­der the pow­ers of the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons.

“I’m very pleased to tell you that since we start­ed this ex­er­cise, 121 per­sons have in fact al­ready been re­leased out of the pris­ons. These are low-risk pris­on­ers who have been mon­i­tored over the en­tire course of their in­car­cer­a­tion and they have been law­ful­ly dis­charged out of prison via the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons’ util­i­sa­tion of this pow­er un­der the pris­ons’ rules and Pris­ons’ Act.”

He al­so stressed that 1,115 peo­ple who are fac­ing mur­der charges or con­vic­tions and could not ac­cess bail would not be con­sid­ered for re­lease, as would pris­on­ers who have com­mit­ted se­ri­ous of­fences such as of­fences against the per­son, dan­ger­ous drugs, kid­nap­ping, traf­fick­ing per­sons, rape, of­fences against chil­dren, all sex­u­al of­fences of a par­tic­u­lar­ly heavy type, an­ti-ter­ror­ism, firearms.