Deportee survey under consideration
Stabroek News
November 10, 2002
A study of the involvement of deportees from North America in local criminal activity could soon be mounted.
At a press conference last month, Police Commissioner Floyd McDonald told a press conference that the intelligence gathered by the police confirms that deportees are involved in the wave of criminal activity that has engulfed the country.
US ambassador Ron Godard, told Stabroek News that he was aware of the statement by the Commissioner but was yet to see the statistical evidence on which the statement was based. He said he would have to explore with the Guyana government its interest in mounting a study similar to the one to be conducted in Jamaica by the US embassy there and the Jamaican government.
A State Department official earlier this year said that a study by a Canadian group on the same phenomenon had concluded that the involvement of deportees in criminal activity in Jamaica was minimal.
Commenting on concerns about the difficulty deportees face in re-settling here because they left here at a tender age, Godard said that of the list of 113 persons who had served sentences in US jails, from his observation, only about a third of them were under 18 when they left Guyana. He said too that since the arrival of the 113, the deportees landing here had been sent back for run-of-the-mill breaches.
Dr Mark Kirton, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Guyana, told Stabroek News that he was unaware of any approaches to UG to assist in looking at the problem. He did say that UG was in the process of completing a proposal for the funding of a study that would look at the political, economic and social impact of the return of criminal deportees to Guyana.
