During the months since February much has been added to the public knowledge regarding policing methods of the Guyana Police Force (the GPF), measures to ensure control and prevention of crime and details of the government’s internal security policy. In the public domain, discussions have ranged from unsolicited advice to the Minister of Home Affairs, Mr. Ronald Gajraj and his incumbent Police Commissioner to criticism of the government’s capacity to devise an appropriate strategy to contain crime and ensure national security.

What has certainly been lacking is the will of the Guyanese people, generally, to engage the issue of the changed relationship between government and the dispensing of justice brought about by the democratization of our society since October 5, 1992. Minister Gajraj was no doubt brought face to face with that reality when he embarked upon fashioning additional powers for the GPF under the Crime Bill. He is to be congratulated for not assumming interference with the fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution is a simple matter.

On the other hand, Guyanese cannot become complacent. Our beloved country is being subjected to the arbitrary return and deportation of persons convicted in the United States of America under its Crime Bill. And that process of deportation shall continue to our detriment. Furthermore, US social policy will dictate an increase in hardened criminals resulting from implementation of that Bill.

What then are the prospects for Guyana? Effective crime prevention and control demands not merely harsher penalties for offenders, in the form of more severe sentences, acquisition of improved detection equipment and most of all increased manpower for the GPF, but also a comprehensive review of our prison system. Government policy must seek to promote an awareness of the dangers of incarceration and the need for new levels of security for hardened and long-term prisoners.

Minister Gajraj should be encouraged to examine a new protocol that properly identifies high-risk prisoners and physically separates them from first offenders and persons on remand while in prison. Implementing, in a humane way, such a protocol will be costly, but that is both the established law and the morality overwhelmingly subscribed to in our beloved country.

On the issue of policing methods, Minister Gajraj and his Commissioner of Police will do well to note that the extension of democratic principles to relations between citizens, regardless of whether they shall be offenders or not, and the state policing agencies impose upon the GPF an onerous obligation to improve their rapport with indigenous communities. The opinions of community leaders and local representatives can no longer be ignored or not be canvassed.