Attzs warns against ‘privatisation of violence’ bill

Akash Sama­roo

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Mar­lene Attzs has crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s Home In­va­sion Bill, call­ing it the “pri­vati­sa­tion of vi­o­lence” and “the out­sourc­ing of the state’s most sa­cred du­ty to thou­sands of fright­ened, un­trained, un­sup­port­ed in­di­vid­u­als”.

Con­tribut­ing late last evening to the Sen­ate de­bate on the “Stand Your Ground” leg­is­la­tion, Dr Attzs said, “we are de­bat­ing this bill that places re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for ad­dress­ing the (crime) scourge on in­di­vid­u­als.”

The Bill, which the Sen­ate will con­tin­ue to de­bate on Fri­day, crim­i­nalis­es home in­va­sion and seeks to em­pow­er oc­cu­pants of homes to law­ful­ly de­fend them­selves, oth­ers, and their prop­er­ty.

How­ev­er, Dr Attzs be­lieves that while it is a good move by the Gov­ern­ment to fi­nal­ly cre­ate the crim­i­nal of­fence of “Home In­va­sion”, there is a “trou­bling” vac­u­um in the leg­is­la­tion.

The In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor said the coun­try’s jus­tice sys­tem may not be equipped to han­dle the po­ten­tial in­flux of cas­es that could arise from de­ter­min­ing whether the use of lethal force, per­mit­ted un­der cer­tain con­di­tions in this Bill, was jus­ti­fied.

Attzs said, “Trinidad and To­ba­go does not have the in­ves­tiga­tive, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al or foren­sic ca­pac­i­ty to re­li­ably or swift­ly re­solve cas­es in­volv­ing dead­ly force. So, I ask the ques­tion, are we as a na­tion re­al­ly pre­pared to add yet an­oth­er lay­er of com­plex­i­ty and bu­reau­cra­cy to a sys­tem that is al­ready burst­ing at its seams and for which we have no mean­ing­ful fix­es in sight?”

The In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor ref­er­enced a 2023–2024 Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee re­port on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, which found that 75 per cent of crim­i­nal cas­es re­main un­re­solved af­ter five years and that 40 per cent of those crim­i­nal cas­es re­main un­re­solved af­ter 10 years.

But Attzs be­lieves the Bill is not about em­pow­er­ing cit­i­zens but rather the Gov­ern­ment trans­fer­ring its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty on­to un­trained cit­i­zens.

“It re­places or­gan­ised, state-man­aged pub­lic se­cu­ri­ty as a pub­lic good with ad hoc house­hold-by-house­hold self-de­fence. It trans­forms safe­ty from a guar­an­teed pub­lic right to a pri­vate gam­ble.”

The In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor al­so lament­ed that when “vi­o­lence is pri­va­tised”, it is not “pri­va­tised even­ly”.

“Those who have the re­sources will for­ti­fy them­selves, and those who don’t have the re­sources will be left more vul­ner­a­ble, more ex­posed, and more at risk of fa­tal mis­un­der­stand­ings.”

She added, “Wealth­i­er house­holds that can ac­cess firearms, alarms, pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty, will thrive, and they will be able to breathe life in­to this bill, and es­sen­tial­ly to un­der­take some of the self-de­fence mech­a­nisms that this bill al­lows, but poor­er house­holds may not be able to do that.”

The Sen­a­tor called for a “whole­some” leg­isla­tive, ju­di­cial, foren­sic and in­ves­tiga­tive ar­chi­tec­ture to give ef­fect to the Bill.

“Where is the strength in the TTPS de­tec­tion frame­work? Where is the re­source foren­sic sci­ence cen­tre? Where is the mod­ernised ju­di­cial case flow sys­tem? Where are the in­te­grat­ed in­ves­ti­gat­ing pro­to­cols? Where is the ev­i­dence han­dling sys­tems, the train­ing, the over­sight? None of these have come be­fore us,” she said.

The Up­per House ad­journed late last evening, and the de­bate will re­sume on Fri­day.

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