'Budget cuts will not weaken our war on crime'

With anxiety over violent crime peaking amid a spree of murders last year, law and order was considered Government’s top priority.
But the financial crisis appears to have trumped the gang crisis and crime-fighting measures suffered as heavily as any in Premier Paula Cox’s austerity Budget.
Police, Corrections, Legal Aid and the Ministry of Justice all saw their funds slashed as Ms Cox insisted her Government must do “more with less”.
Michael Scott, Attorney General and Minister of Justice, told the Bermuda Sun’s James Whittaker how he plans to build on recent crime-fighting successes in the new climate of tight purse strings.

Clearly crime is still a big issue for Bermuda. How do you balance fighting gang and gun crime in the midst of this economic crisis?

We have to prioritize. We have $54 million, National Security has a much larger budget.

Instead of cutting core operational programmes or infra-structure that are directly impacting drugs coming into the country or gangs, we make sure our dollars are spent there first.

There are still millions of dollars available to us — the real task for ministers and their managers is smartly and strategically redeploying those scarcer dollars without compromising core programmes.

Auditing programmes, identifying duplication of services, identifying waste… that was the objective of the Budget and we have achieved that.

Is the Witness Protection Programme still on the agenda?

Absolutely. The Ministry of Justice has, under the legislation, countries with which we partner on witness protection.

They require that we have a formal programme and we require that they do. This is so there is reciprocity and so everybody knows what is expected of one another.

Witness Protection legislation was rolled out last year to establish the jurisdictions that will participate in a programme, how it will be managed, to set out the conditions of how it will be used and the criteria of applicants who agree to participate.

We expected and hoped it would produce witnesses and help get convictions and it has proven to be the case in various recent prosecutions in the courts of Bermuda.

We are in the process of establishing an administrative headquarters for the programme within the Department of Public Prosecutions.

What exactly does witness protection involve?

The Justice Protection Act 2010 is quite flexible — it allows for everything from a temporary change of location to a complete change of identity.

The belt and braces elements of protection includes provision for new documents and a new identity if necessary.

It really depends on the level of risk. It is unlikely we would have to go that far in all cases but the legislative structure is there for use in appropriate cases.

Sometimes it would be for a change of location protection until the end of the trial.

You highlighted various programmes at the prison — do you see it as an under-used resource in the fight against gang crime, in particular?

It can be a field of dreams. We need to focus our energies on the goal of transformation.

What we are looking at is an effectiveness audit of existing programmes of treatment, education and training.

We are looking at all programmes with that core mission of transformation in mind.

What kind of things are you talking about?

Programmes to help prisoners become entrepreneurial, to help them become employable and give them options to be reintegrated into society.

When I was junior minister I crafted a paper called Casemates Transformation Centre — looking at using Casemates as an ‘under-one-roof’ facility within our corrections community.

You walk in that door and by the time you walk out you have a comprehensive set of experiences — clinical intervention, training intervention, education intervention and spiritual intervention that will help you turn your life around.

I envisioned using Casemates as a centre to help prisoners transition back to the real world.

It might contain a laundry and a pizza parlour where they could test their entrepreneurial skills on the public, in the same way as Stonington Beach used to for college students.

How do you achieve those goals within the current budget?

It is a long-term vision but the challenge is to have elements of that rolled out within the current system.

We might be able to implement parts of it in a pilot programme.

We still have recidivism rates that are not acceptable — we are in the grip of a serious crime spike.

The challenge is ever present and it could not be more poignant.

We need to review and assess the value of our existing programmes and make sure that goal of intervention and transformation is at the forefront.

You mentioned plans for a clampdown on drugs in the prisons. How will it work?

A corrections environment is not the place where you want a stream of drugs coming in.

You are there for punishment, not to get high. You are there to get your life turned around. Drugs were part of what got you there in the first place.

We have intelligence as to how it comes in — it is smuggled in or thrown over the prison walls.

We need improved security and surveillance systems and to stop it being moved in by human agents.

It is my intention to make a strong effort to cut off those avenues.

A prison society is a community and it closely mirrors the outside world.

The lines can get blurred with people turning a blind eye to drug use or cellphone use.

The security needs to be there as well as a collegiate commitment on the part of corrections officers to stop drugs coming into prison.

We have heard rumours about senior gang members using cellphones to run things from within prison. Is this the case?

Cellphones were a big problem. The National Security minister, who had this department before me, made huge successes in clamping down on that.

Detection and confiscation of cellphones has been happening apace. Systems are in place to detect and block the use of cellphones.

Blocking is important to stop the management of crime from inside the prison as well as to stop drugs entering the prison.

You are tightening up on Legal Aid. Please explain.

We cannot continue to fund Legal Aid to increased levels. It has become less sustainable in the context of increased serious crime.

We are re-examining the criteria to make sure an application is merit-based.

The criteria has to be more stringently applied. If you are charged with murder, your case is clearly serious, but if the evidence for the prosecution is overwhelming that will impact the legal aid committee.

If the complexity of the case is such that it merits a highly experienced QC, that could still happen but the Legal Aid committee will look closely at it.

There is broad support for policy changes — there is less tolerance within the community given the heinous crimes happening.

When I was working as a lawyer 10 years ago there were not as many serious crimes — most people were working and paid for their own legal representation.

Today it is different and we must be more judicious about who gets legal aid.