JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, February 22, 2025

New senator wants Govt to understand criminal justice system

by

Renuka Singh
1501 days ago
20210113
Temporary Opposition Senator Renuka Rambhajan

Temporary Opposition Senator Renuka Rambhajan

Cod­i­fy­ing rules al­ready gov­ern­ing the Ev­i­dence Act will not make it bet­ter.

That is the view of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) tem­po­rary sen­a­tor and crim­i­nal at­tor­ney Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan made dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion to the Ev­i­dence (Amend­ment) Act in Sen­ate yes­ter­day.

Sen­ate de­bat­ed the Ev­i­dence (Amend­ment) Act which seeks to pro­vide for the use of dif­fer­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­ce­dures, in­ter­views and oral ad­mis­sions, spe­cial mea­sures ev­i­dence by video link.

Ramb­ha­jan spoke just af­ter Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal and said while they share a first name, they do not share an opin­ion on this de­bate.

“I sug­gest re­spect­ful­ly to the mem­bers of the In­de­pen­dent bench that what would hap­pen is a pletho­ra of cas­es be­ing dis­missed,” she said.

“Po­lice of­fi­cers are in­ca­pable or un­able to sat­is­fy the statu­to­ry bur­dens that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al wish­es to place up­on them through this piece of leg­is­la­tion,” she said.

Ramb­ha­jan said that the amend­ments were “ex­act repli­cas” of the Eng­lish leg­is­la­tion.

“The dif­fer­ence be­tween Eng­land and T&T is that we do not have the re­sources that they do,” Ramb­ha­jan said.

“If you are giv­ing them leg­isla­tive du­ties, you have to equal­ly give them re­sources and I sup­port my col­league, Sen­a­tor (Jayan­ti) Lutch­me­di­al, who said that there was a bud­getary cut, so how are do­ing the two things?” she asked.

“So you want the po­lice do some­thing, but you not giv­ing them noth­ing to do it with,” she said.

Ramb­ha­jan said she ex­pect­ed to be chal­lenged on that mat­ter and pre­empt­ed by fur­ther ex­pla­na­tion.

“The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al would say we’ve pro­vid­ed the plant, the ma­chin­ery, the tools and the peo­ple. Where is it? I am not see­ing it, with the great­est of re­spect, “she said.

Ramb­ha­jan said that as well-in­ten­tioned as the amend­ments are, with­out the prac­ti­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ties for im­ple­men­ta­tion, it is all mere­ly “words on pa­per”.

“That is all it is. And when you are deal­ing with the fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms of the peo­ple of T&T, you can­not just re­duce it to words on pa­per,” she said.

She paint­ed a sce­nario of a man ar­rest­ed at 2 am and tak­en to the sta­tion with­out a war­rant and when he asked for his right to a phone call is told to use his mo­bile.

“That is a re­al­i­ty,” she said.

“Would the po­lice have the rel­e­vant train­ing, knowl­edge and ca­pa­bil­i­ty to do that which they want to do through this leg­is­la­tion? I say to you they would not,” she added.

She said that some­thing as sim­ple as sta­tion di­aries are of­ten un­avail­able as po­lice of­fi­cers say that they use their pri­vate di­aries for work pur­pos­es.

She said that while the Gov­ern­ment’s at­tempt to fix the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem was “well-in­ten­tioned”, they need­ed to bet­ter un­der­stand it first.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored