Criminologist welcomes stronger judicial oversight in new bill

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad has wel­comed the stronger ju­di­cial over­sight pro­posed un­der the new Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill but cau­tions that the leg­is­la­tion risks be­com­ing lit­tle more than a crime-sup­pres­sion mea­sure if it fails to ad­dress the so­cial con­di­tions that con­tribute to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia by phone, Seep­er­sad said the lat­est ver­sion of the leg­is­la­tion in­cludes stronger checks and bal­ances, par­tic­u­lar­ly through in­creased ju­di­cial in­volve­ment.

How­ev­er, he ex­pressed con­cern about what ap­pears to be a di­min­ished fo­cus on so­cial in­ter­ven­tion pro­grammes.

“If that is some­thing that is large­ly ab­sent from the new it­er­a­tion of it, then that’s a mas­sive red flag for me be­cause then it’s noth­ing more than a crime-sup­pres­sion ini­tia­tive,” Seep­er­sad said.

The bill out­lines mul­ti­ple lay­ers of ju­di­cial over­sight for peo­ple de­tained dur­ing spe­cial op­er­a­tions.

Un­der the pro­posed law, a de­tainee must be brought be­fore a mag­is­trate, who may au­tho­rise de­ten­tion for up to 48 hours. If a per­son re­mains in cus­tody for 36 hours with­out such an or­der, the of­fi­cer in charge must no­ti­fy an of­fi­cer of at least as­sis­tant su­per­in­ten­dent rank, who is re­quired to in­ves­ti­gate the cir­cum­stances and en­sure the de­tainee is brought be­fore a mag­is­trate.

Where a mag­is­trate au­tho­ris­es the ini­tial 48-hour de­ten­tion, the de­tainee must then ap­pear be­fore a High Court judge. The judge may or­der fur­ther de­ten­tion with­out crim­i­nal charges if sat­is­fied that it is rea­son­ably re­quired in the in­ter­ests of jus­tice.

The bill does not spec­i­fy a max­i­mum pe­ri­od for such ex­tend­ed de­ten­tion.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the po­ten­tial dan­gers of the pro­vi­sion, Seep­er­sad said the in­volve­ment of the ju­di­cia­ry pro­vides an im­por­tant safe­guard.

“There’s a dan­ger in that you could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly in­car­cer­ate some­body in­def­i­nite­ly with­out ever charg­ing them. But the im­por­tant thing for me, at least, is that you’ve tak­en that de­ci­sion out of the hands of the po­lice,” he said.

He added that the ef­fec­tive­ness of the safe­guard would ul­ti­mate­ly de­pend on the lev­el of scruti­ny ap­plied by judges.

Seep­er­sad said the con­se­quences of de­ten­tion with­out charge could be se­vere, not on­ly for the in­di­vid­ual but al­so for their fam­i­ly.

“The bur­den of proof for a con­vic­tion is pret­ty high. So, I’m say­ing the stan­dards at the ju­di­cia­ry are pret­ty high. You can’t come with some­thing friv­o­lous or fly-by-night be­fore the ju­di­cia­ry and ex­pect to get a PDO. They’re go­ing to throw it out,” he said.

“So, yes, while there is def­i­nite­ly po­ten­tial for the con­tra­ven­tion of hu­man rights, my sin­cere hope is that that is min­imised as far as pos­si­ble. Be­cause you’re talk­ing about a life-chang­ing event. If you de­tain some­body, that per­son could lose their job. The fam­i­ly could suf­fer if that’s the bread­win­ner and you lock them up. You’re talk­ing about some­thing that could change a per­son’s life for­ev­er.”

Seep­er­sad al­so raised con­cerns about what he de­scribed as re­sis­tance with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice to the use of body-worn cam­eras, ar­gu­ing that the tech­nol­o­gy could sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prove trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“But this is not some­thing that is unique to T&T. Coun­tries that use it have more trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and oth­er ben­e­fits, in­clud­ing greater ad­her­ence to the law when po­lice op­er­a­tions are car­ried out. It en­hances polic­ing,” he said.

He fur­ther de­scribed the bill’s re­quire­ment that of­fi­cers wear body cam­eras “when avail­able” as an “out” that could un­der­mine the pro­vi­sion’s ef­fec­tive­ness.

Seep­er­sad said he hoped the TTPS would even­tu­al­ly recog­nise the ben­e­fits of the tech­nol­o­gy and that a cul­tur­al shift in favour of body-worn cam­eras would emerge with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.