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$58M allotted for probation development action plan
– Prison overcrowding rate at 209 percent
With the ongoing issue of overcrowding at prisons, the Ministry of Legal Affairs has allocated $58M to implement a probation development action plan.
This was revealed by Attorney General Basil Williams when the budget debates continued last week Friday.
Probation in criminal law in which a criminal offender is supervised for a period, rather than incarcerated.
In some jurisdictions, the term probation applies to community sentences, such as suspended sentences.
According to Williams, statistics obtained from the Ministry of Social Protection show that only 0.57% of the total prison population was placed on probation for this year.
“Our goal is to strengthen the Probation Services Department so that a minimum of 1.05% of the prison population is placed on probation and shifting the focus to the person’s rehabilitative needs,” Williams highlighted.
Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Basil Williams
He explained that last year, the Government received a US$8 loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to Support the Criminal Justice System (SCJS) in reducing the prison overcrowding situation and increasing the use of alternative sentencing.
The Attorney General said, “Currently, the prison overcrowding rate is 209%. We have experienced the challenges of prison overcrowding in Guyana on multiple occasions. (These include) numerous safety challenges, negative effects on the physical and mental well-being of prisoners and violent incidents.”
Williams explained that the support for the Criminal Justice System program comprises of six interventions which will help in tackling the social phenomenon. These are a Legal Aid intervention, strengthening Probation Services, a restorative justice project, implementing a case management system, technical support to the Law Reform Commission, and strengthening the Judiciary and Prosecutors.
According to the Attorney General, “A study completed in 2017 shows that approximately 71% of prisoners did not have legal representation. For those who were able to access representation, only 14% were represented by a Public Defender.
The SCJS programme allocated $31M to provide support in various legal aid tasks in prisons and police stations, such as seeking dismissal of charges, arranging diversion where appropriate, or arguing for bail and generally avoiding procedural delays. We anticipate that at least 20 percent of those accused of minor, non-violent offenses in pre-trial detention will benefit from this intervention.”
Overcrowding is one of the reasons that was blamed for the fire which destroyed the Georgetown Prison
In his 2017 report, the Auditor General noted that the Support for the Criminal Justice System programme is likely to exceed its intended deadline of August 20, 2022, due to delays in the timely execution of activities, and underspending. The report highlighted that the programme commenced on February 21, 2017—date agreement was signed between Government and IDB—and is to be executed within five years and six months, bringing it to an end on August 20, 2022.
However, the report highlighted that for the period under review US$706,000 was allocated for the period under review of which only US$102,859 were expended on operational activities.
“The project is subject to separate reporting and audit and according to the financial statement of the project as at December 31, 2017, the project expended sums totalling US$102,859 for the payment of salary/gratuity, office furniture, office equipment, supplies, and advertisement cost,” the Auditor General Report pointed out.
The Auditor General Report highlighted, “It is also noted that the delay in the timely execution of the program’s activities and spending of 15% of the allocated resources could result in the program not achieving its objectives and an overrun of the life of the program.”
Responding, the Ministry of Legal Affairs said that the project commenced in June 2017, and that the programme team and IDB representatives reviewed the results matrices because activities planned for the six months’ period and budgets at US$706,000 were not realistic and needed realignment.
“The activities were then adjusted and the budget was revised which will result in the normalization of the programme spending by the end of 2019 and the project life within the stipulated time frame,” the ministry added.
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