Evidence based policy could bolster law enforcement- Minister Ramjattan
GINA, GUYANA, Wednesday, November 30, 2016
Evidence based decision making will bolster law enforcement institutions to work towards reducing crime and violence among young people, Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan said.
Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan, and UNDP Deputy Country Representative, Shabnam Mallick
Minister Ramjattan was giving the key note address at the opening of a two-day inception workshop today, for the CARISECURE project at the Regency Suites, Hadfield Street.
The government is working with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to improve the quality of citizen security data available for decision making on policies and programmes aimed at reducing youth involvement in crime and violence through the CARISECURE project.
Evidence based decision making process for citizen security called the CARISECURE project, seeks to improve the quality of citizen security data available for decision making on policies and programmes to prevent crime.
The project is being funded by the USAID, through a grant of US$14M and will be implemented across 10 eastern and southern Caribbean countries with specific emphasis on St Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis, and Guyana.
“Evidence based decision making for citizen security in the Caribbean will certainly make more effective our law enforcement sector,” Minister Ramjattan said.
Additionally, the Minister noted the opportunity for the improvement of the technical capacity to collect and analyse data. “When we do this
Regional and local stakeholders at the CARISECURE inception workshop
evidence based decision making we are going to be more clinical and in a way surgical in what the programmes and policies should be,” Minister Ramjattan said.
UNDP’s Deputy Country Representative, Shabnam Mallick said the workshop sought to generate discussions on the “availability, comparability, reliability and analysis of disaggregated citizen security data.”
Mallick said in order to contribute to the reduction in youth crime and violence, the UNDP will focus on achieving the following three outputs: standardised and disaggregated crime data sources established to facilitate identification and measurement of youth risk and resilient factors; evidence based analysis of crime and violence data carried out to inform policy making and programming, and improved decision making on youth crime and violence based on available evidence at the national, sub regional and regional levels.
The CARISECURE project will complement on-going efforts to create environments that prevent youth participation in criminal activity. The five-year project is part of USAID’s Youth Empowerment Service (YES) Project which was launched earlier this week.
By Tiffny Rhodius
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