PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC—Government and opposition legislators closed ranks late Monday. They passed the Bail Amendment (2024) Bill, which provides bail restrictions to people charged with serious offenses.
“I want to state now the Opposition will support this bill in the public interest of the people of Trinidad and Tobago,” said Opposition Leader Kamla Persad Bissessar,
Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley said that the legislation would give the “police a chance” and urged “responsible legislators” to “let us let the criminals know that, in this Parliament, the people’s representatives have taken the initiative to shorten the instances of persons taking advantage of a population that has had just too much of violent criminal conduct.
“As they say, ‘You know what the police can do’. This is what parliamentarians can do,” Rowley said
The government needed a special three-fifths majority of the Parliament to pass the legislation to extend the bail bill by a year, but it failed to get support in the Senate in 2022. The Bail Bill 2024 is aimed at amending the Bail Act.
Attorney General Reginald Armour, who piloted the legislation, said it seeks to give effect to the Privy Council’s ruling in the Akili Charles case that people charged with murder can seek bail.
The bill provides that a judge or master may grant bail to a person charged with murder and seeks to impose conditions on the exercise of the Court’s discretion in granting bail to persons accused of murder, serious offenses, and firearm-related offenses. The burden is on the accused to show cause why bail should be granted.
Armour said the legislation, for the first time, allows a master to grant bail.
“It is for us, on both sides, to accept our mandate conferred by our Constitution, as legislators in these challenging times, to pass constitutionally compliant legislation, whether by simple or super majority, tailored to protect and serve the public interest. It’s not enough to say, ‘This bill requires a three-fifths majority, and I’m voting against it.
“This is the opportunity for us to have confidence in ourselves to do our job and pass this bill in the public interest.”
Armour said that the government recognizes that the proposed restrictions on exercising the Court’s discretion to grant or refuse bail to persons charged with serious offenses will not somehow miraculously end the wave of criminality facing the country in recent years.
“However, we recognize that the majority of citizens are law-abiding citizens who are constantly terrorized by, and who live in fear of, a minority of miscreants who blatantly continue to choose a path of lawlessness. The government believes the proposed measures are crucial to reducing the likelihood of repeat offenders, particularly seasoned criminals, from obtaining bail …,” he told legislators.
Armour said the Bail Amendment (2024) bill was also critical to addressing the situation of repeat offenders of serious offenses seeking bail and that the Law Reform Commission, which advised on the bill, considered the crime situation particularly serious, including murder and gang- -and firearm-related offenses within the last five years.
He said consideration was also given to the fact that the provisions of the 2019 Bail (Amendment) Act, which expired in 2022, are no longer in force. This restricted bail to people charged with serious offenses and who had either a pending charge or a previous conviction for a serious offense.
“This is significant since, as a result, the likelihood of repeat offenders of serious offenses obtaining bail has significantly increased. There’s a real concern that under the current bail regime, there’s a real likelihood that repeat offenders of serious offenses will obtain bail.” Armour added.
In her contribution, Persad Bissessar said the legislation was not a “garbage bill” but contained “remedies” that resulted from the case Akili Charles versus the State.
She said the judgment in that case had, in effect, created a “balance” and remedied some of the Opposition’s problems with the earlier bail bills.
However, she criticized the government for introducing the legislation two years after the judgment, adding that the bill alone could not solve the crime.
“While we will support the bill, it is clear that this is not a plaster on a gaping wound; denial of bail alone is not the answer to fighting crime,” she said, noting that it has not even been a crime-fighting measure as since 1994 there have been laws concerning denying bail which did not alleviate crime.
She said the bill’s objective is to deny bail in certain circumstances and emphasized the need for speedier justice.
“We have seen where persons stay on remand, on average six to eight years the data shows…in this country we have people rotting in jail for ten years while awaiting trial,” she said, adding that the bill provides for people to apply for bail where no evidence is taken in 180 days.
“In a perfect world, evidence would be taken before the 180 days and trial completed within the year, but this is not even possible when the Office of the DPP (Director of Public Prosecutions) is telling us that they are understaffed,” she said.
Persad Bissessar said to fix crime, the people need to vote the People’s National Movement (PNM) out of office.
“Today, I say this country will soon go to the polls…the population knows that our crime problems will not be solved by the same thinking from this incompetent Government,” she said.
However, Rowley dismissed the opposition leader’s statement that the voters would soon go to the polls to elect a new government.
“With your record, I would stay far from elections,” he said, adding, “I notice my colleague from Siparia is opposed to the election. Whenever my colleague gets the opportunity, she says, ‘An election is due.’ Who tells you that?
“I want to comfort my colleague from Siparia; I do not intend to call the election very soon. You have to be here a little while longer in that seat. This government I lead was elected to serve for five years … We have a long time to go to your next defeat, so don’t be too anxious,” he added.
Prime Minister Rowley said the government genuinely believed that the Bail Amendment Bill would put “a bit of pressure” on those who have chosen crime as a way of life.
He said the police had asked for the measure as part of their crime-fighting strategies and that it would help deal with the “small number of people who are terrorizing the population.”
“Because the criminals know exactly what the law permits and don’t permit,” he said, adding that the bill intends to inconvenience those who get in a situation where they are charged and taken to Court for severe offenses listed in the schedule.
“To say that because the law has not put an end to criminality or an end to the growing incidence of violent crime, it is useless, is not a reasonable argument,” he said, noting that serious offenses were occurring very frequently.
Rowley clarified that the bill did not say that everybody who commits a violent crime will be denied bail.
But he said police officers, “especially those who go out there every night and every day and confront the armed murderers and other criminals, tell you that what irks them most is the revolving door, having to go to the same people over and over.
“You arrest them, they come before the Court, they go through the process, and within 48 hours, they are back on the streets doing the same thing again…They will tell you that is the worst part of the job because if they manage to apprehend and identify, they believe that that should slow down the role that they play in the criminal incidents in the country.
“But no, they go to the court, they have no fear of the court, they have no fear of being detained, they just go back out the next day, the next week, and they carry on,” Rowley said, telling legislators that another critical situation is the arrogance of some of the criminals.
“The most important thing I would like to see out of this bill when it is re-enacted is expediting trials in the country’s courts. The criminals must know that once they are apprehended, they are on a fast track to going to jail if they are guilty.
“And to get back your freedom if you are not guilty. If, when we pass this bill, it is still business as usual in the courts where today’s matters would be heard in the next five to ten years, then we would have accomplished nothing. But if, on the other hand, we manage to expedite trials and dispense justice promptly, this measure will bring about significant relief to the broader population.
“If a person is to be denied bail, we trust that the rest of the system, the Judiciary, will be cognizant of that, and the police will be cognizant of that so that when a person is denied bail for this prescribed period (180 days), people…will know that we have to work faster and better to be able to have the trial expedited so that a position of guilt or innocence can be established in a reasonable time frame…because if after the number of days and conditions are not met by the police and the Judiciary, then this would be another failing on the part of the societal response,” Rowley said.
The bill allows a magistrate to continue granting bail for summary offenses, while a judge and master will now have jurisdiction to grant bail to a person charged with murder.
In addition, the accused must satisfy the judge or master of the existence of exceptional circumstances to justify the granting of bail, and offenses such as treason and piracy continue to be non-bailable offenses,
The bill stipulates that a judge/master may not grant bail to a person charged with an offense punishable by imprisonment for ten years or more. The person must have a previous conviction for any offense punishable by imprisonment for ten years or more or have a pending charge for an offense listed in Part II of the First Schedule (comprising severe offenses) unless he can show sufficient cause why his remand in custody is not justified.
The right of appeal would be an additional significant safeguard, and the Bail Act will be reviewed every five years, with a report to be made.
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