1st meeting of Task Force on evidence-driven crime prevention held
Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan on Wednesday convened the first meeting of the National CariSECURE – Strengthening Evidence Based Decision Making for Citizen Security in the Caribbean Task Force for the implementation of data-driven tools for evidence-based policy-making in Guyana.
The Task Force was established last November to bolster evidence-driven crime prevention.
Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan; Deputy UNDP Resident Representative for Guyana, Shabnam Mallick; US Ambassador to Guyana, Perry Holloway and other members of the National CariSECURE Task Force
The meeting was attended by representatives of the Public Security Ministry; Guyana Police Force (GPF); Guyana Prison Service (GPS); Bureau of Statistics; Ministry of Public Health; Ministry of Legal Affairs; Ministry of Social Protection; Director of Public Prosecutions Chambers; Ministry of Social Cohesion, Department of Culture, Youth and Sport. Also, in attendance was Paolo Del Mistro, Team Leader on the CariSECURE Project.
The meeting looked at the 2018 Annual Work Plan which included the establishment of a Table of Equivalencies, adoption of the Caribbean Composite Citizen Security Indicator Framework, adoption of the Caribbean Composite Citizen Security Data Sharing Agreement, design and deployment of a Crime Information Management System, piloting of the Women’s Health and Life Experiences Survey and the crime victimisation and perception survey, and Guyana guidance note on Citizen Security Data Collection and Dissemination.
Minister Ramjattan highlighted the roles and responsibilities of the Task Force. These included the best approaches and mechanisms for effective implementation of the 2018 Work Plan.
The Public Security Minister went on to reiterate Government’s national priorities and commitment to advance citizen security. He also expressed his sincere gratitude to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for their support in implementing CariSECURE.
CariSECURE is being implemented in 10 Eastern and Southern Caribbean countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago, with specific emphasis on Guyana, St Kitts and Nevis and St Lucia as priority countries.
The project is geared towards improving the quality, comparability, reliability and use of information management systems to inform citizen security policies and programmes.
This year is expected to see the arrival of a company to design the system to support an integrated data collection system for all the relevant sources, and the acquisition of computers for the various stations and other offices from which data will be sourced.
