Dear Editor,
Any first year student of the Criminal Justice System would know there are at least two philosophical perspectives that inform our positions on crime control. There is the conservative approach to criminal justice which holds that once you commit a crime you should be punished and the harsher the punishment the better. Holders of this philosophy believe that committing a crime is a conscious decision of the offender. That the offender takes into consideration the penalty attached to the crime if caught, and has decided that committing the crime is worth the risk. Thus, for this philosophy punishment must be harsh, for punishment is seen as deterrence. This would be so both for persons who committed crime, since they would be unlikely to commit crime again because of the harsh punishment he/she experienced. The presence of harsh punishment would also deter he/she who has never committed an offence but contemplates doing so.
Then there is the liberal approach to crime control. For Liberals rehabilitation is the core of their perspective. Crime for liberals is the result of bad influences from one’s immediate environment and from social factors such as discrimination and lack of economic opportunities. They believe that people can be reformed and therefore liberals are in a never ending search for the effective rehabilitation programme. Anderson and Newman having evaluated the success of this search by liberals thus far concluded “faith continues to survive in the face of repeated failure.” (1993). This brings us to President Granger who I will assume identifies with the liberal perspective. Mr. Granger’s declaration that he will continue to pardon young non- violent offenders and his statement – “young people should be in school, rather than in jail” seem to give credence to my above assumption.
But while I am sympathetic to the liberal view of crime control I am also aware that statistics in most of the developed world show that recidivism is pretty high, and years ago when I last checked it was the same for Guyana. So I identify with what is implied by the quote from Anderson and Newman mentioned above. I know that setting young offenders free with merely instructing “go and sin no more,” is not in any way a substitute for a creditable programme that give us some confidence that they would indeed “sin no more.” In the USA research indicates that 67.5% of former inmates are rearrested within three years (Dyer, 2005). Further, other studies tell us that a major predictor of future criminality is one’s unemployment history, other good predictors are, an offender’s age and family situation. It would seem that many offenders struggle to find jobs on release and they likely return to family situations that had steered them towards crime in the first place. I would suspect that the same is true for Guyana since even young and qualified non-offenders struggle to find employment. So what do we do to give these young offenders a fighting chance of not becoming recidivists?
It would seem to me that offenders who have been identified for a presidential pardon, should have to commit to a rehabilitation programme. Such programmes should be designed to help them on the path to socially approved ways they identify for directing their energies as a mean of earning a living. This might start with helping those who are so inclined, in their preparation for taking the entrance examination for acceptance at one of our skills training institutions. Offenders must commit to sit with career guidance officers and probation officers who will have the responsibility for helping them make career choices and monitoring their progress. If the offender does not stay true to the contract he/she should be returned to jail and have to serve out his term with no time reduction for the period he/she was on probation.
Further, the focus on giving productive skills to offenders as the main ingredient of a rehabilitation programme is dangerous. Even though most of the crimes committed by young people are either aimed at gaining material goods or abuse, both forms of crime tend to have a violent component or suggest a tendency to violence. This means offenders will have to be helped to improve their ability to use rational judgement to solve problems. Without the patience needed to settle disputes lawfully and without adequate care or concern for the safety of others there is little hope of pardoned offenders not becoming recidivists. A pardon for offenders without a programme that helps them to meet and surmount the challenges that contributed to their incarceration in the first place might be good intention but not effective policy.
Editor, based upon what I have offered above the things that the government would have to do to make the president’s determination to freeing young non -violent offenders a meaningful exercise would be expensive. We would have to at least commence a diploma course, perhaps at the University of Guyana, that would produce a number of career guidance professionals. A social work programme that focuses on training of probation officers would also have to be launched. This would mean finding resources for the employment of a number of guidance officers. Also, the existing number of probation officers is likely to be inadequate for this added duty of closely monitoring these pardoned offenders and employing persons graduating from these courses will be challenging. In 1982 the USA had 1.27 million persons working in the justice system, in 2003 it was 2.3 million, the rise was attributed mainly to the fact that the justice system had changed from a focus on punishment to one of correction. Now for certain Guyana cannot and has no need to spend anything in the vicinity of these amounts, but I quote these figures to emphasize that correctional programmes are expensive.
But even with all this there is another concern, when a government concentrates on rehabilitating offenders it must also give some consideration to a larger truth. Modern writers on criminal justice argue that when an offence is done it affects the offender, the victim and the community. Thus, repairing the offender is not enough, for victims’ lives have been affected and communities know fear. So there is a need for rehabilitation to be expanded and become restorative and return both victims and community to a state of normalcy as much as possible.
Of course a number of these concerns can be addressed without too much added cost if the entire criminal justice system embraces a new approach to dispensing justice. But a discourse on this matter will have to be the focus of another letter.
Editor, in closing I beg your patience. Recently I had need to write the NIS on a personal matter. I am happy to publicly state my thanks to the General Manager for her prompt and satisfying response to my concerns. I wanted to publicly do this because; especially it seems; we in the diaspora do not hesitate to publicly state our dissatisfaction and annoyance when we feel neglected and or disrespected by the NIS.
Again Mrs. Nelson thank you for your speedy and comprehensive response.
Yours faithfully,
Claudius Prince
