The fact that almost half of the persons at Her Majesty’s Prisons Dodds are on remand shows that the local justice system is not functioning well.
Making this assertion Criminologist Yolande Forde noted that the serious bottlenecks within the system have to be addressed.
“As it stands right now, almost half of the persons who are at HMP Dodds are remand persons. That really is a reflection of a justice system that cannot possibly be working efficiently. I do not know what the causes are for the delays,… but something obviously is very wrong,” she insisted.
Forde pointed out that many defence lawyers were already complaining that it was wrong for persons to face numerous adjournments as cases did not move forward.
Stating that Plea Bargain legislation was now being considered by the stakeholders, she pointed out that this would allow the relevant parties to get together and the person accused of the crime is encouraged to plead to a lesser offence, which would allow the case to move faster through the system.
“Barbados has also taken some other steps that are commendable such as the Drug Treatment Court. A person suffering from drug addiction is a person who is ill and that person’s problem is not going to be solved through incarceration. The establishment of this court in 2014 is definitely a step in the right direction and perhaps we need to move further in establishing problem solving courts. A drug treatment court is a problem solving court and is also a diversion from incarceration,” she stated.
Speaking on the People’s Business recently, Forde opined that incarceration was in many respects “an expensive way of making bad behaviour worse.”
“We seem to have an image of a prison as a hospital where people go to o get better and that is not necessarily the case and the rates of recidivism show it as two thirds of the people who go to prison return,” she stressed.
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