Gail Alexan­der

Why bring back the Bail Bill to Par­lia­ment when it didn’t work be­fore?

That’s the query raised by Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who’s in­stead rec­om­mend­ed a pro­gramme of bail re­form.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar did so at the UNC’s Mon­day Night Fo­rum, as she slammed the Gov­ern­ment on the crime sit­u­a­tion.

She pre­dict­ed that the PNM’s Ch­agua­nas meet­ing last night would on­ly be about “bouff­ing and dis­tract­ing.”

Af­ter spi­ralling mur­ders, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob had urged the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion to bring a re­vised Bail Bill to Par­lia­ment to help the po­lice bat­tle the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

The ex­ten­sion of the bill was de­feat­ed in the Sen­ate in Ju­ly due to a lack of Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors’ sup­port.

That bill sought to de­ny bail for 120 days to peo­ple charged with cer­tain se­ri­ous crimes, in­clud­ing il­le­gal weapon pos­ses­sion.

The Gov­ern­ment sub­se­quent­ly sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to do more con­sul­ta­tions and bring an­oth­er such bill with re­vi­sions.

But dur­ing the meet­ing on Mon­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “You (Gov­ern­ment) had (the bill) – it didn’t work. You came back and asked us to ex­tend it and we said okay be­cause you were blam­ing us. We gave them the spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty votes ... (but) it still failed. Noth­ing hap­pened. It didn’t help.

“Why are you com­ing again with the same plan, you’re so clue­less you don’t have a thought. What’s your plan? To lock up the whole coun­try? You had that leg­is­la­tion be­fore – it didn’t work.”

List­ing plans the UNC of­fered in 2020 on crime, she spoke in favour of pre-tri­al de­ten­tion and bail re­form

She said, “There are fun­da­men­tal in­jus­tices of the bail sys­tem. To get out of jail un­der our bail sys­tem, de­fen­dants have to put up cash or oth­er as­sets to pay a bond, which serves as col­lat­er­al to se­cure their re­turn for fu­ture court dates. If they show up, the court re­turns their mon­ey up­on the con­clu­sion of the tri­al, re­gard­less of the out­come. If they don’t, they for­feit funds and face ad­di­tion­al penal­ties for ab­scond­ing.

“This scheme ben­e­fits rich peo­ple over poor peo­ple. It al­lows many de­fen­dants with fi­nan­cial re­sources to post bond, bail out and go about their lives while await­ing tri­al, even when fac­ing more se­ri­ous charges than a poor per­son with a mi­nor charge who can­not af­ford bail. De­fen­dants who cur­rent­ly re­main in­car­cer­at­ed are of­ten poor or suf­fer­ing from men­tal health or sub­stance abuse is­sues.”

She added, ” Bail isn’t in­tend­ed to be used to pun­ish these in­di­vid­u­als and isn’t sup­posed to be set high­er than is nec­es­sary to pre­serve pub­lic safe­ty and as­sure that the ac­cused re­turns to court. Those who can’t af­ford bail end up pay­ing in­stead with time be­hind bars.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so spoke of poor con­di­tions in jail, say­ing: “Those, com­bined with jail over­crowd­ing, lead to acute psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma dur­ing con­fine­ment, even for men­tal­ly sta­ble in­mates. So, if you aren’t a crim­i­nal be­fore they lock you up with­out bail, by the time you come out you’re turned in­to one. You be­come in­hu­mane.

“For those en­tan­gled in the sys­tem, the con­se­quences are bru­tal. Many de­fen­dants are liv­ing pay­cheque-to-pay­cheque. If they can’t show up to work, they get fired and are stripped of the abil­i­ty to be fi­nan­cial­ly self-suf­fi­cient, or if they have de­pen­dents, they are un­able to sup­port them.”

She cit­ed al­ter­na­tive ap­proach­es to pre-tri­al de­ten­tion that aren’t sole­ly based on a per­son’s abil­i­ty to pay. This in­cludes in­di­vid­u­alised as­sess­ments that con­sid­er a de­fen­dant’s per­son­al, fi­nan­cial and crim­i­nal back­ground in or­der to in­form bail de­ci­sions.

“These risk pro­files can be used to de­ter­mine ap­pro­pri­ate bail amounts, as well as who must re­main be­hind bars with­out bail, who can be re­leased un­der the su­per­vi­sion of a pre­tri­al ser­vices pro­gramme and who can leave un­der their own re­cog­ni­zance.”

She sug­gest­ed min­i­mum se­cu­ri­ty de­ten­tion cen­tres around T&T with work re­lease dur­ing the day and de­ten­tion af­ter work hours for non-vi­o­lent of­fend­ers who are re­mand­ed pre­tri­al and can­not ac­cess bail.