Toshaos trained in fostering relationships between crime offenders, victims

Victims of crime may often hold animosity towards individuals who have wronged them. To repair this injury by fostering relationships between offenders and victims, several Toshaos from Indigenous communities across the country on Wednesday commenced training in restorative justice.

This initiative is being implemented under the Inter-American Development Bank-funded Support for the Criminal Justice System (SCJS) project, which, among other things, would help Guyana overcome prison overcrowding by reducing pre-trial detentions and increasing the use of alternative sentencing among other measures.

Delivering opening remarks at the training, which was held at the Sleepin Hotel in Georgetown, was Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister Anil Nandlall, SC, who gave a brief overview of the principles of restorative justice and how it can reform the justice system.

The Attorney General has said that while restorative justice is relatively new in the Caribbean, it is among the innovations experts have implemented to deal with criminal behaviour, deviant conduct, and violence.
According to the Attorney General, it has been found that traditional theories and methods of dealing with criminal behaviour and violent conduct have not yielded favourable results.
“So, ordinarily, sanctions of crime and punishment are supposed to rehabilitate and reform [offenders, but] they have not yielded the type of success. As a result, over the centuries, there has been a discernible increase in criminal behaviour,” Nandlall explained.
Nandlall further explained that experts were forced to find other theories, strategies and plans to address the increase in criminal activities. Out of this quest, he said, came restorative justice, which, according to him, goes deeper than the occupants of the prison.
According to the Attorney General, restorative justice goes back to the underlying causes that have resulted in a person being incarcerated, and tries to address the root causes. For example, he explained, if someone is charged with murder, restorative justice examines and evaluates the causal circumstances that may have led the individual to commit the crime.
He said, “So, did the person commit murder because of poverty? Or is it that that person came from a family where domestic violence and other forms of violence were prevalent? Or is there still yet some other peculiar reason?” Against this backdrop, he said that behavioural experts such as sociologists, psychologists, and criminologists are promoting restorative justice to assess the cause of social ills.
Nandlall informed that young people would be targeted and, as such, similar training would be provided to all school teachers. He said this is an effort to target the next generation, so that they would have the skills to settle disputes in their formative years.
“If we are able to plant that seed there, it will have a positive impact of keeping them away from the prison system,” he explained. “When someone commits a crime against you, you do not want to be close to that person. You have animosity for that person, you have hatred for that person, you have hostility for that person. You may even have in your mind a desire for revenge. All of these things naturally may lead to more violence and more persons (being) in the prison system. One of the components of restorative justice is to put the two parties together and have them trash out their difference…,” he added.
The Attorney General disclosed that judicial officers, religious leaders, some teachers and probation officers have already undergone training in restorative justice. He added that persons would also be trained as trainers in restorative justice, in order to ease the country’s dependence on foreign consultants.
This SCJS project is a US$8 million project approved by the IDB. The project is divided into two components. The first component seeks to reduce the use of pre-trial detention, especially for individuals accused of minor offences. The idea is to provide better legal assistance to individuals accused of committing non-violent offences; improve the prosecutors’ ability to handle cases according to the seriousness of the offences; strengthen the judiciary, and design and implement a restorative justice programme.
A second component of this programme seeks to increase the use of alternative sentencing by the criminal justice system in Guyana. This includes strengthening the country’s legal drafting functions, modernising probation services, and implementing a pilot project at the Magistrate’s Court level to apply alternatives to imprisonment for non-violent offenders. The SCJS project commenced in 2017. (G1)