Rhon­dor Dowlat

For what­ev­er the rea­son, the Mer­cy Com­mit­tee of T&T has seem­ing­ly been in­ac­tive over the years and there is a sub­stan­tial back­log of re­quests by pris­on­ers re­quest­ing par­don from the Pres­i­dent.

This was yes­ter­day dis­closed by the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young dur­ing his brief ad­dress at yes­ter­day’s 2019 Prepa­ra­tion for Re­lease Pro­gramme launch that took place at the Chapel of the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca. The pro­gramme is in its 15th year.

This year’s theme is “Keys to Suc­cess­ful Re-En­try.” The pro­gramme falls un­der the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion, Vi­sion on Mis­sion (VoM) head­ed by Wayne Chance.

Young said dur­ing a re­cent vis­it to one of the na­tion’s pris­ons he was ap­proached by a pris­on­er who en­quired from him about the Mer­cy Com­mit­tee and par­dons.

Ad­mit­ting he was not too fa­mil­iar, Young said when he re­turned to the of­fice he made the nec­es­sary en­quiries and found out more about the Mer­cy Com­mit­tee or the Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Par­don, which he said is chaired by the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and four oth­er mem­bers.

Young said there were cur­rent­ly hun­dreds of re­quests.

“There are so many pris­on­ers wait­ing to be par­doned…I have al­ready be­gun read­ing files from back to front and try­ing now to push it,” he said.

Young said he had since presided over one com­mit­tee meet­ing and gave the as­sur­ance that the com­mit­tee would at least meet once every month.

He called on cor­po­rate T&T to join in on the work to help re­ha­bil­i­tate and rein­te­grate pris­on­ers back in­to so­ci­ety by hir­ing them, “giv­ing them a chance again.”

Young promised ren­o­vat­ed pris­ons in­clud­ing wash­room fa­cil­i­ties in cells and prop­er ven­ti­la­tion.

This year, join­ing and pledg­ing its sup­port to as­sist in the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and rein­te­gra­tion of in­mates in­to so­ci­ety af­ter serv­ing their re­spec­tive sen­tences is the Eu­ro­pean Union.

Speak­ing at the cer­e­mo­ny, Head of Del­e­ga­tion of the EU of T&T, Am­bas­sador Arend Biese­broek said the EU de­cid­ed to sup­port the Vi­sion on Mis­sion cause so that it could as­sist in pro­mot­ing the rights of pris­on­ers.

Biese­broek said that he, along with oth­er mem­bers of the EU del­e­ga­tion, vis­it­ed all the pris­ons, in­clud­ing the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre to “gauge the con­di­tions of the pris­ons” and ad­mit­ted that they ob­served that the cur­rent con­di­tions were “bet­ter than they ex­pect­ed.”

He, how­ev­er, not­ed se­ri­ous con­cerns about the pro­longed re­mand times and the lack of fol­low-up of re-in­te­grat­ed pris­on­ers.

Since the re-en­try pro­gramme, the VoM had 598 grad­u­ates for 2018 and over its 15 years—8,381 grad­u­ates.