The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

A YOUTH justice organisation that is set to enter into a partnership with the Office of the Attorney General is speaking out against the idea that militarisation of schools is an antidote to behavioral problems affecting young people.

In the wake of the stabbing incident at the Government High School campus last week, some Bahamians have called for tougher policies.

Among others, Marvin Dames, the former deputy commissioner of police and the Free National Movement’s candidate for Mount Mariah, said Sunday that metal detectors should be placed at entrances into junior and senior high public schools and called for the presence of additional security guards on campus.

However, Project Youth Justice (PYJ), a legal aid service organisation for youth in conflict with the law, said actions like these will prove counterproductive amid a justice system that often inflicts overly harsh punishment on youth.

In a press statement yesterday, the organisation said: “While responses to these kinds of incidents must be firm, it is important not to criminalise our young people or to militarise our schools, turning them into maximum security compounds, especially when our juvenile system does not currently provide restorative justice or alternative means of sentencing as interventions.

“We must avoid transforming our public school system into a pipeline that funnels our young people into the formal criminal justice system to be abused by adult inmates and conditioned into hardened criminals.”

Indeed, the organisation noted that University of the Bahamas research shows that most students feel safer on school campuses than away from them, and most fights take place outside school hours rather than during school hours.

The flagship element of PYJ is its a Teen Court Pilot Programme, which is funded by the US State Department’s 2016 Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund (AEIF) and has the support of the Office of the Attorney General and Ministry of Legal Affairs.

“Teen Court is a diversion programme for juveniles that have been arrested and have admitted guilt for their crime,” the organisation said. “Those teens chose to be sentenced by a jury of their peers instead of going through the formal criminal justice system. Teen court assigns constructive consequences that are designed to help the defendant understand why their behaviour was wrong, repair the harm they caused, and help them make better choices in the future. Case studies of this programme and other intervention programmes like it have shown remarkable results in changing the behaviour of young people.

“We have been working closely with the Attorney-General Allyson Maynard Gibson to realise this pilot programme. The Office of the Attorney General has committed in writing to identifying a representative to sit on the board of directors for the programme and to work to establish a system to review and refer cases that might be best disposed of through the pilot programme. Eventually, we also hope to engage the Ministry of Education and the Royal Bahamas Police Force.”