Electronic monitoring devices costly, says AG

WHILE Government is open to the idea of electronic monitoring for criminal offenders, the cost thus far has been prohibitive.

That’s according to Attorney General and Minister of Home Affairs, Adriel Brathwaite. He made the disclosure as he fielded questions at the last Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association’s Quarterly General Meeting

at the Hilton Hotel, where he was the featured speaker. Brathwaite told the audience made up of stakeholders in the hospitality industry, that the relevant authorities have had various presentations made to them on the topic, but the costs of undertaking such an initiative, he said, was quite pricey.

“It is also a volume issue. One provider, for example, said it wouldn’t be worth their while unless they had at least, I am going to say at least 1 000. But the long and short of it, from a volume perspective, just wasn’t doable. [But] I have not ruled it out as a solution because we really want to move in that direction,” he stated.

The AG’s comments came as he said that such technology would be indeed quite useful in addressing domestic violence matters before the court. He explained that there are systems that can prevent perpetrators of domestic violence from going where they are prohibited from going. He said that for instance, if the person approached the matrimonial home and they were not supposed to be there, a notification would be sent automatically to the police to respond. Similarly, for persons out on bail with stipulations, the electronic monitoring devices would also allow the authorities to keep track of them.

“But it is a bit of a resource issue and a volume issue; we just have not found the right service provider as yet,” he explained.

Meanwhile, responding to a question about the decriminalisation of marijuana, the AG insisted that if and when Barbados moves in that direction, it has to be accompanied by a very serious public health warning campaign.

“You hear arguments about alcohol is legal and it causes all this damage to families and people and marijuana is safer. I think the time will come very soon where we are going to have to move in that direction as a country, but my caution would be that it has to come with a very serious PR campaign, that in fact that we are not encouraging our young people to smoke marijuana,” he said.

Brathwaite added, “To my knowledge, the Ministry of Health in Jamaica is having some very serious challenges because they didn’t do exactly what I think needs to be done, a serious public health campaign. So that is a very serious challenge in terms of many more young people going into mental health programme because they associated decriminalisation with go smoke as much as possible.”

Finally, where there is merit about the medical use of marijuana, and scientific evidence that marijuana can be beneficial, he indicated that as a country we would have to embrace it. (JRT)