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PACE Justice Project workshop for investigators and prosecutors gets underway
(Kaieteur News) – A two-day capacity building exercise is underway to help strengthen the collaboration between police investigators and prosecutors for more effective justice system outcomes.
The workshop which began on June 11 and ends today is a joint initiative between the office of the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) and the Guyana Police Force (GPF) which is also supported by the PACE Justice Project.
PACE is a collaborative, EU-funded initiative implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to modernise the criminal justice system in Guyana and seven other Caribbean nations. Its primary goals are to reduce court case backlogs, decrease pre-trial detention rates, and implement digital reforms.
A section of the EU-funded PACE capacity building exercise to help strengthen the collaboration between police investigators and prosecutors.
UNDP and Operations Specialist, Dhiraj Singh said under the PACE Justice Project, Guyana, through the Ministries of Legal Affairs and Home Affairs, the Judiciary and the Office of the DPP, is benefiting from G$186 million in initiatives all aimed at strengthening the systems, processes and personnel in the criminal justice system.
In her address at opening session of the workshop held at the Police Officer’s Mess in Kingston, Home Affairs Minister Oniedge Walrond said that the joint DPP–Police Training Workshop reflects our government’s strategic commitment to building a modern, professional, and accountable justice sector.
She said, “By strengthening collaboration between investigators and prosecutors, we are enhancing the effectiveness of our criminal justice system, improving public confidence, and ensuring that our institutions are equipped to meet the demands of a rapidly developing nation. Guyana’s transformation is not measured solely by economic growth, but by the strength of the institutions that protect our democracy, uphold the rule of law, and serve our people.”
Deputy Solicitor General Shoshana Lall, who addressed the workshop on behalf of the Attorney General, said the training underscores the crucial importance of the investigation and prosecutorial processes in criminal justice reform.
She noted one of the three interventions under the PACE Justice Project is to empower stakeholders – the Judiciary, prosecutors, police – all the actors in the criminal justice landscape – through training and capacity-building.
Ms. Lall said, “We welcome the assistance of PACE, all of our valued multi-stakeholder supporters and our facilitators.”
The Deputy Solicitor General noted that the idea is for prosecutors to aggressively acquaint themselves with new laws – for example, in the areas of plea bargaining and the abolition of Preliminary Inquiries.
She said the Attorney General has worked with various stakeholders to bring these laws on-board and has expressed some amount of concern that the plea-bargaining mechanism is not being utilised as widely as intended.
According to her, as part of this PACE roll-out, the Attorney General would like to design a permanent training programme that police officers have to go through at each rank to deal strictly with criminal legal matters – legal procedure, the Constitution; relevant statutes, interpretation and application; case law and new laws.
Having identified this gap, Lall said that the Attorney General has spoken to the Chancellor, DPP, police leadership and PACE officials and the consensus is that this is a necessary training initiative that ought to be developed.
“The Judiciary will launch the Criminal Procedure Rules later this year. We have seen how impactful the Civil Procedure Rules have been in Guyana – that is another facet of training that the prosecutors and police will have to undergo as they prosecute in the Magistrates and High Court,” she said.
In April, PACE facilitated training in criminal trials and criminal appeals for High Court and Court of Appeal Judges facilitated by former President of Trinidad and Tobago and former Judge of the Court of Appeal of Trinidad and Tobago Paula-Mae Weekes.
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