Restorative justice: A farfetched idea for the Caribbean?
Nov 16, 2009
from the article by Abiola Inniss posted on Set Our People Free...
Recent years have found the Caribbean embroiled in the challenges of drug trafficking, money laundering, murder, rape, robbery and crimes of all sorts. Gang warfare in Jamaica and Trinidad have resulted in appalling loss of lives, damage to property and devastated the communities involved.
Guyana also experienced the murder of a large number of persons in the wasting by gunmen of the Kaieteur News press men, the Lusignan and Bartica massacres and numerous other murders that have remained unsolved.
Some of these crimes have been clearly linked to the drug trade while others seem to have been committed in what has become the ordinary run of criminal activities; since as in the words of Guyana’s poet laureate Martin Carter “Men murder men as men must murder men”.
The proposal of restorative justice as a means of dealing with some of our problems is premised on the evidence that determinate sentencing and the currents means of keeping law and order are failing in the Caribbean at the same time as we grapple with the growing disorder in societies which result in crime and vice-versa. This form of justice holds the promise of aiding in the reversal of these factors and correcting some root causes. So then the question what is restorative justice?
