RMs urged to give more community sentences
May 26, 2006
MONTEGO BAY, St James - Donald Miller, coordinator for the justice ministry's Community Service Order (CSO) programme, has urged magistrates to give more community sentences for minor non-violent offences.
"We need to have more judges utilising the option (community service order) because we strongly believe that more persons should be sentenced to do community work," said Miller.
He said that while the number of persons being sentenced to do community service have shown an increase over the last few years in some parishes, only "a few" are handed down in others.
Last year, 2,077 persons were given community service orders, an increase of more than 55 per cent over the previous year.
Of the number of people sentenced to do community service in 2005, the parish of Manchester recorded the highest - a total of 231 cases - while 22 such orders were made in Hanover.
Miller, speaking to the Observer on Wednesday after addressing a workshop for probation officers and stakeholders of the community service programme at the Verney House Hotel in Montego Bay, said that the lack of application of the law was one of the major factors preventing more persons from being given community sentences.
".Sometimes people don't take time out to read the law carefully and see how to apply it and sometimes it is sheer negligence," he said.
Senior Resident Magistrate for St James Winsome Henry, who was in attendance at the workshop, said that although the parish of St James has handed down a "reasonable amount" of community service order sentences, there was still room for improvement.
She said she would be calling a meeting of resident magistrates in the parish, in an effort to see how best more community service orders could be handed down....
Author: Mark Cummings
Source: Jamaica Observer
