Indigenous leaders benefit from restorative justice training

Indigenous leaders from across the country are benefitting from training through the International Institute of Restorative Practices (IIRP) restorative justice programme.

Restorative justice is a response to crime, which emphasises healing the wounds of victims, offenders and communities, caused or exposed by criminal behaviour.

Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Hon. Mohabir Anil Nandlall, SC, said restorative justice now digs deeper into the underlying factors that lead to criminality.

“Restorative justice in this part of the world is, maybe, considered new, but it is one of the innovations experts have come up with to deal with criminal behaviour, violent conduct, deviant conduct et cetera.

It has been found that the traditional theories and methods of dealing with criminal behaviour and violent conduct have not yielded the results anticipated,” he said, at theopening session on Wednesday.

Social scientists, he said, were then forced to find other strategies to address the issue, which led to the concept of restorative justice.

“It goes deeper than the occupants of the prison. It goes back to the underlying causes that may have resulted in the persons being in the prison and it tries to address those root causes,” the Attorney General said.

Another component of the programme seeks to bring the offender and victim together to “melt that ice of hate,” the AG noted. This will allow them to discuss their differences to understand what caused the criminality in the first instance.

Guyana’s criminal justice system receives support from the Inter-American Development Bank, with the aim of reducing the prison population here. Restorative justice forms part of the support programme.

The indigenous leaders are among several groups, including teachers, religious leaders and judicial and probation officers to receive training in the programme. The Attorney General said originally, there were plans to train 100 persons. However, the Government views restorative justice as important and is expanding the training. The Legal Affairs Ministry would therefore, be seeking the assistance of the Ministries of Education and Human Services and Social Security to have all teachers and probation officers trained.