Guyana AG ‘disturbed’ over prison problem

GEORGETOWN — The Attorney-General of Guyana, Doodnauth Singh, has said he was also very much “disturbed” by the recent disclosure of the Chancellor of the Judiciary about the high percentage of prisoners on remand in the Georgetown Prison.

A former long-serving senior practitioner of the local bar, Singh, who became attorney-general less than a year ago, was reacting to an earlier statement by Chancellor Desiree Bernard at a Magistrates Conference, that some 41 per cent of the 831 persons at the Georgetown Prison were prisoners on remand, some for as long as four years.

The Chancellor’s comment was based on an interim report from a special committee currently probing the criminal justice system.

Attorney-General Singh said that the matter needed urgent attention.But he explained that it was linked to a combination of factors including the need for more magistrates, reduction in the amount of time allowed to police prosecutors before trial begins and also the absence of a practice of preliminary hearings at which essential winesses are heard to determine whether or not a case had been made out against the accused.

In relation to the introduction of community service as an alternative to custodial sentencing for first and young offenders, or those on petty or non-serious crimes, the attorney-general said that there was no provision in the law for this at the moment and consideration would be given to such a possibility.

OAS’ Gaviria has high profile in region

BRIDGETOWN — The Secretary-General of the Organisation of American States (OAS), Cesar Gaviria has significantly increased his presence in the Caribbean region with official visits to member states for various programmes in which the hemispheric body is involved.

Since the start of this year he has been on visits to Barbados, Belize, Trinidad and Tobago and will be back in the region in June for the OAS General Assembly, scheduled for June 1-4 in Barbados.

For his visit to Trinidad and Tobago this week to address the opening of the Fourth Meeting of Ministers of Justice/Attorneys General of member states of the OAS which concludes in Port-of-Spain today, Gaviria took the opportunity to also visit the Secretariat headquarters of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) and meet with Secretary-General Norman Girvan.

The ACS secretary-general and Gaviria recently met in Washington to discuss how best the two bodies could more effectively co-operate in the interest of the Caribbean-Latin American region and their respective member countries.

In May, Gaviria will be back in Port-of-Spain to participate in an OAS Trade Unit initiative with the Inter-American Development Bank and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribean (ECLAC) on a trade conference on capacity building in preparation for the emerging Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

According to one Caribbean diplomat, the increasing interest being shown by the OAS secretary-general has, coincidentally, followed the appointment as his special adviser, the Suriname-born former assistant secretary-general of the Caribbean Community, Albert Ramdin last year.

A summary report of the Conference on Constitutional Reform in the Caribbean, sponsored jointly the OAS and the University of the West Indies, in Babados in January, is expected to be ready by the time of the OAS General Assembly in June.