(Trinidad Express) Political scientist Dr Selwyn Ryan said yesterday that the report which was laid in Parliament last Friday by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar was “in effect a draft report”.
The findings of the report, “No time to Quit—Engaging Youth at Risk”, have been panned by the police and prisons officers and its findings questioned by even government minister Suruj Rambachan.
“What happened is that we submitted the report, which was in effect a draft report. We expected the Government to have a look at it and come back to us with a reaction. But it (the Government) went straight to the publication channel (tabling the Report in Parliament) before we had any notion of how they saw what we did and what were they reactions. We are still awaiting that. They are going to study the findings and say something about it (in terms of) what they found that they could accept and what they could use. We are waiting for a reaction, just as you are, in a way”, he said in a telephone interview yesterday.
Ryan yesterday stated that some of the findings were not definitive. He said, for instance, he never said that 30 to 40 per cent of police were corrupt. “I said police are frequently accused of being responsible for much of the corruption that exists in the drug economy. Some of our informants believe that between 30 and 40 per cent of the members of the Police Service are corrupt etc. And I go on to say that these allegations are difficult to prove or establish, but many believe them to be true.
“So I am not saying this categorically. We proceeded on the basis of talking to stakeholders, people whom we think have something to say, who are knowledgeable. So that figures are things that we get and I say these things are not easy to establish, they are controversial. They can’t be measured. You have to make an assessment based on what informants say,” he said.
His response to persons challenging the findings was, “Yes, as they should.” Ryan said sometimes the person making the assertion has not read the relevant section of the report and therefore is not reacting to what was actually said.
Housing Minister Dr Roodal Moonilal said yesterday he personally was not aware that the report was a draft report “but that does not mean that it wasn’t”.
He said the Government laid it in Parliament to generate the debate and the interest that it has. “The report did make several worthy recommendations which we will look at,” he said.
Moonilal said the Ryan report was commissioned by the Government in the immediate aftermath of the State of Emergency in 2011 when the Government felt there was a need to investigate further the incidence of crime, particularly among the youth in the so-called hotspot areas.
Noting that the report took a year or so to complete, he said having received it the various ministers and ministries would now look at the findings and recommendations to see where possible what policy and programmes could be implemented.
Moonilal conceded that there has been a lot of discussion in the public domain about the veracity of the report’s findings, with some suggesting that the methodology is anecdotal to an extent, and based on secondary rather than primary data.
“While this may be true, it means that as a government we can look to revise the data as well and study the data (to see) where policies and programmes can emanate. But I don’t think it merits a wholesale condemnation, but rather an attempt to understand the perspective and, if need be, do further analysis on some of the areas that the report dealt with,” he said.
Moonilal, who was in charge of CEPEP during the period of review in the report, said he was not aware of any drug lords being involved in CEPEP. He said the way the programme operates, the contractors are generally recommended by MPs in the various areas and they are asked to be very cautious about who they recommend.
“But we would work harder to ensure that the programme is more transparent and clean of all foul elements,” he said.
He added that a lot had been done to clean up that programme and to ensure organisational and institutional strengthening to minimise inefficiencies. “Of course, more could be done…. and we continue to work on that front,” he said.
Ryan explained yesterday that, like the findings on the police, the observations on CEPEP in the report had to be taken in context. “In terms of CEPEP, if you read the text that precedes that alleged statement, you will find a lot of remedial restorative work has been done in CEPEP. We spent almost a day in there, talking to almost all the people and there is a fairly long piece in the report about the reforms that have been made at CEPEP.
“But what it says at the end is that, notwithstanding all the positive things that have been done—and I mean positive things such as how they recruit, the paying of people’s money into the bank, in fact they got good marks in my calculation about what they have done so far to improve the functioning of CEPEP. But that does not mean that the drug lords are entirely silent or ineffective. If you have an organisation that has had a particular feature for many years, you don’t get rid of it overnight.
“So what I did say (in the report) was that some drug lords are still able to penetrate what work has been done, and also to intimidate those who receive wages and force them to pay proportions of their income to them in return for protection and for all kinds of other related things,” Ryan stated.
He added that he did not intend to give the impression that CEPEP was as URP used to be. “ It’s much better, but that does not mean that the gang lords are not involved and are not able to coerce people who are recipients of wage income,” he said.
Ryan said the authors of the report would be taking steps to “popularise and publish” some of the findings. “It is a big report. There is a lot in it – some controversial, some not so controversial. But our role is to let people know what is in the report, what is of relevance, what is of concern and take it from there,” he said.
The report was authored by Ryan, Dr Indira Rampersad, Patricia Mohammed, Dr Marjorie Thorpe and Lennox Bernard.
Ryan wrote the chapters titled “Police is a Bandit Too”; “Beyond the ‘Pail’: Towards Prison Reform; and “Young Blacks and Entrepreneurship”, chapters which deal with the police, prisons officers and CEPEP, respectively, and which have generated much controversy.
