Terry Lister: Crime & Violence Town Hall

Focusing on crime and violence, PLP Leadership hopeful Terry Lister hosted the third of his Town Halls tonight [Aug 19] in St George’s. This is the third of such meetings, following the first Town Hall which addressed the economy, and the second which was on energy and environment.

After making a speech outlining his positions on crime and violence, Mr Lister took questions from the floor. He was asked would he support a gun bounty/reward, and Mr Lister replied yes saying “it would cost money, but may save lives.” He also spoke on the gender matter, saying that although we focus on male crimes; we also experience problems with females acting in anti-social manners. On the subject of charter schools, he said he does not support them because they further divide. He was asked would be change the tax structure to enable parents to survive on one paycheck, and his answer to that was yes he would be reviewing taxes and Mr Lister also said he accepted the need for continuing financial assistance because he thought it was especially good for providing cross-generational assistance.

The full text of Mr Lister’s speech is below:

Good evening ladies and gentlemen,

Welcome to our third Town Hall meeting. Tonight our topic is Crime and Violence-What is the answer. In fact I am not anticipating “the” answer tonight rather as we share together in true town hall fashion I expect that we will gleam upon a path that can lead to solutions for our community and that a healing can begin.

In my campaign to be the next leader of the PLP I have three major principals upon which I plan to operate. These are Accountability, Responsibility and Togetherness. This is our ART test. Are we being Accountable and transparent. Are we planning Responsibly and in an economical manner. And are we working Together. In this small island of 60,000 people we must set aside former barriers and dividers of Business and Consumer,Management and Labour, Black and White. Because we can only solve the problems of Bermuda by working together.

The notion that the PLP has been ‘soft on crime’ is a myth. For the past ten years, the PLP Government has progressively increased funding for law enforcement operations, equipment and training. New policing initiatives beginning with the adoption of a community- oriented problem-solving policing model and ‘intelligence-led policing’ in 2001 during my time as the Public Safety Minister followed by a realignment of Service operations in 2001 and again in 2007 resulted in more focused Police work with notable increases in drug seizures, weapons seizures and arrests.

The PLP Government has implemented significant legislation such as: increased penalty zones for drugs offences, knives and weapons legislation, increased penalties for offences involving firearms, increased powers to confiscate assets acquired through crime, DNA legislation and increased Police stop and search powers allied to the Police and Criminal Evidence (PACE) legislation. But, there is still more work to be done.

The proliferation of gun crime in the past two years in particular has resulted in additional enforcement and legislative measures. Witnesses can now be better protected with the passage of witness protection legislation. Yet despite some aggressive legislative initiatives it is clear that many in the community want our attention to be directed on the causes of crime. Most of our offending males for this recent gun crime fall into the roughly 16-25 age cohort. It is clear that more needs to be done to prevent crime and reduce offending by directing specific resources at high risk males at a younger age.

We need to reject the notion that failure is an option and that some of our young males will simply fall through the cracks because that’s the way it has always been. We need to inspire a sense of worth and purpose in all of our young people by targeting specific, professional resources from within the vast wealth of helping professions within our Government to help ‘save’ our children. Whether these resources are in the Health Ministry, the Education Ministry, Social Rehabilitation or in the Ministry of Labour, Home Affairs and Housing we simply must increase the number of families we reach and do a better job of identifying at risk families and at risk youth and direct the very best in professional help and resources to help those most in need. This investment today will reap dividends tomorrow in terms of less of our young people making poor and sometimes fatal choices later. “An ounce of discipline today is pounds of law and order tomorrow”.

The gun crime we see today has many causes. It is easy to blame it on turf wars and to say it is all because of drugs. It is foolhardy to say the gangsters are all killing each other so let it go until they all are dead. These views are too narrow. The causes run much deeper than these. We must accept that several generations of under educated black men would ultimately come back to haunt us. Now is that time. We must accept that the failure to demand that every able bodied young man be required by society-you,me,his family- to learn a trade and become employed would bring troubles down on us. Now it has. We must accept that the downturn in the economy which has seen many small businesses engage in a struggle for survival would result in our young men being unemployed and under employed and that this would lead to loss of hope for self and belief in country. Now is that time. We must not however accept that this is our beautiful island’s fate. No we must not.

Upon election to the leadership of the Progressive Labour Party, I will support the following initiatives as part of ‘what needs to be done’ under the portfolio of crime, law enforcement and criminal justice.

My response to the present situation is seen in four areas:

• PREVENTION
• ENFORCEMENT
• REHABILITATION
• CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

PREVENTION

I will:

• Ensure that appropriate funding is allocated for crime prevention programmes with a track record of excellence and proven results.
• Ensure that appropriate funding is budgeted for those programmes, new and existing, which specifically target the ‘at risk‘ young person, young offender and their families.
• Support additional research which might be necessary on the correlation between drugs and crime. At the same time we will review the research being carried out in other countries to get the benefit of their findings and to bring these to bear on our own situation.
• Review the current legislation and policy initiatives on how our society and criminal justice system processes domestic violence victims and offenders. This will be done to ensure that victims are supported, offenders prosecuted and placed in appropriate treatment programmes thereby reducing the incidences of domestic violence. Exposure to domestic violence increases the possibility of violence by our young men.
• Establish anti-bulling programmes in the public schools to create a safe environment for students and teachers.
• Direct a specific proportion of Government’s education budget towards ‘anti gang-awareness’ training in our schools beginning in Middle School.
• Target teen-aged males and females with a ‘don’t get pregnant’ awareness programme which will lessen the likelihood of young people being raised in an ‘at risk’ circumstance.

ENFORCEMENT

I will:

• Ensure that law enforcement efforts are also directed at those who fund the drug trade and not just the drug suppliers, distributors and users.
• Make available foreign task force officers such as might be necessary to work with local Police service to reduce serious, violent and gang related crime.
• Ensure that targets are set for a higher police profile in crime ‘hot spots’ and neighbourhoods where their presence is required to reduce crime.
• Ensure the funding for police training on ‘anti-gang awareness‘ training continues.
• Focus all available efforts on ensuring DNA technology is used to the fullest, in accordance with existing legislation, to investigate, detect and prosecute offenders.

REHABILITATION

I will:

• Cause a review to be taken of our rehabilitation efforts to assess whether we are providing the best possible programmes for recovery.
• Provide real incentives for individuals who demonstrate a willingness to rehabilitate themselves.
• Provide comprehensive assessments to help restore a criminal to his normal self.
• Experienced helping professionals will develop individual treatment plans with the offenders to assist the offender to recognise the change that much be made to return to his former self.
• Seek to expand the remit of the Drug Court to ensure that a greater proportion of those who find themselves being processed in the criminal justice system can pave their own way towards rehabilitation.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

I will:

• Consult with the law enforcement authorities and request their input on whether the statutory sentences are commensurate with the crimes. Where there is support and justification to amend sentencing powers further, we will do so.
• Enact legislation to permit trial by judge without a jury in certain crimes.
• Encourage early release of offenders who have fully complied with their court ordered rehabilitation programme.
• Ensure that early release provisions are reviewed so as to make early release more difficult for drug, serious crime and violent crime offenders.
• Review the effectiveness of Court Services, Drug Court and Probation Services.
• Make sure that victims rights are fully defended and enshrined in legislation.
• Propose legislation to increase the mandatory sentences for gun crime.
• Seek to amend the legislation to re-classify controlled drugs to increase the penalties for possession and distribution of the ‘hardest’ and most dangerous of drugs and reduce the penalties for possession of small quantities of the ‘softest’ of drugs.

#BermudaPolitics #CrimeInBermuda #PLP #ProgressiveLabourParty #TerryLister

Category: All, Crime, News, Politics