USAID youth employment scheme proposed for pardoned offenders

A proposal has been made to government for the youth offenders who were recently selected for presidential pardons to be enrolled in USAID’s Skills and Knowledge for Youth Employment (SKYE) Pro-ject, according to Attorney General Basil Williams.

Williams, who took up his new post at the beginning of this week, told Stabroek News during an interview on Thursday that the government’s desire is to have the approximately 60 youths, who are between the ages of 15 and 25, exposed to some type of programme to “enable them to make something of their lives and so they would not have to reenter the prison.”

He revealed that USAID had written him with a proposal to collaborate with the Guyana Prison Service to include the pardoned offenders in the programme so that they could be prepared for reintegration into society.

According to Williams, the SKYE project, which is centred on coaching, preparing youth for work and self-employment as well as providing linkages to employment, may not be able to accommodate all those selected for pardons. However, he said a similar programme, developed by former Director of Prisons Dale Erskine, may be of some use to the reintegration process.

During a special interview with members of the media last month, President David Granger had announced that 60 young prisoners, convicted for non-violent crimes, would be pardoned. He also said efforts would be made to develop training programmes to help reintegrate them into society.

The pardons were to have started on May 26th but to date no one has been released. It is unclear what the holdup is.

Williams could not say when the releases would begin and pointed all queries in this regard to Director of Prisons Welton Trotz. When contacted, Trotz opted not to provide any details on the issue, while noting that he is “still awaiting the official document from the Office of the President or Legal Affairs Ministry.” He said he did not know the exact number of persons who would be pardoned and could not detail the offences for which they were convicted.

Williams said the president has consulted him on the pardons and a list was supplied by Trotz with all the relevant data on the offenders. He was not prepared to share this information with this newspaper, saying, “We don’t really want to share that out.” He said the offences include simple larceny, cell phone theft and other non-violent crimes.

Asked about the view that the pardons may be seen as an encouragement for the continued commission of these types of crimes, Williams said it was “not necessarily” so. He also questioned why persons would want to be incarcerated in a prison that is not in good condition.

He said the government does not want “young people to be in the jail. If we give them a chance, give them an opportunity… you provide them with an orientation for when they come out, they don’t have to do that. If they insist on being a jailbird, I don’t think we can do anything about that.”

Williams noted that when convicted for petty crimes, these young persons would still end up in jail for a time. “They will be spending time in there. The pardon is not going to be every day. Whenever the pardon come up, it is not going to be made every day so they don’t know if they will be pardoned by the time they finish their sentence,” he said.