Several draft bills aimed at stemming the upsurge in violent crimes are to be debated in the current session of the Legislative Assembly, which began Monday.
The package is aimed at bringing about reform in the criminal justice system, says a GIS press release.
These proposed new pieces of legislation were preceded by the recently announced bill to amend the Firearms Law, which will also be debated.
That bill – the centrepiece of the reform – seeks to ensure that persons convicted of serious firearm offences are put in jail for at least 10 years. That law will retain the current stiff maximum penalties of up to 20 years incarceration and a fine of up to $100,000 upon conviction for serious firearm offences.
While the recent increase in crime is generally confined to a small core of persons with a criminal bent, the Cabinet is concerned that this does not take root and has resolved to do everything possible to curb this trend, the release said.
The additional pieces of the legislative reform package seek to:
• reduce the frequency with which bail is granted for crimes that are violent, pervasive and of a socially disruptive nature;
• widen the grounds of appeal from decisions of the Grand Court;
• in the case of specified, serious crime, increase the period of mandatory incarceration before a prisoner can be released on probation, from the previous one-third to five-ninths;
• provide for the courts to decide that disruptive or otherwise accused persons must appear through their counsel or by live television or other link;
• make it an offence for a telephone company to refuse to produce information in the prevention or detection of crime;
• outlaw gang membership and carriage of ‘restricted weapons’ at night in certain public places; and
• provide for longer periods of detention of suspects, while safeguarding rights of accused persons.
The bills were published in Extraordinary Gazette No. 35, on 6 October.
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