The government intends to enact witness protection legislation and has suggested that a discourse take place around this issue so I thought it useful to give an insight into how these schemes operate. I was also drawn to the topic because of a statement by the Minister of Public Security, Mr. Khemraj Ramjattan. He has claimed that the law is necessary to give comfort to persons who are now ‘scared to death’ to testify in some of the cases thrown-up by the many forensic audits the government commissioned but the results from which have fallen far below public expectations (Gov’t schedules consultation on witness protection bill SN 23/09/2016).
The little I know of witness protection programmes suggests to me that they are mainly the alternative to prison, etc. for criminals who are willing to inform on their former colleagues and are usually very demanding of those who enter them. Thus the minister is either using the occasion of the introduction of the law to excuse the government’s incapacity to extract what the public expected from the forensic audits or he is unwittingly setting himself up to be very disappointed.
The United States of America has arguably the oldest and most successful national witness protection
