ONE of the things that irks me is the way justice is dispensed in Guyana. It churns my innards the way in which the perpetrators of criminal acts are treated as if they are the ones who have suffered and not the victims, this outpouring of sympathy for the criminal and none for the victim. 

Even more distressing is the fact that some justices seem to adhere to this school of thought wherein we see a great degree of laxity when the time comes for the offender to be punished while some judges are guilty of poor delivery in their decisions.
Sometimes I give a heavy sigh of disbelief at some sentences and wonder what were these justices thinking when they handed down such ludicrous sentences. I shudder at the very thought of the point we’ve arrived at; a society of imbeciles all benumbed to the clarion call for justice, no wonder crime and criminals are on the rise. With such sentiments pervading, society is in for the long haul and crime will not abate any sooner. To prove my point I shall discuss a few of these cases.
I begin my discussion with the case of that guy (can’t remember his name) who intentionally drowned his two children because, as the excuse goes, “he was frustrated with their mother.” The horrible thing about that case is he threw the two youngsters into the creek and watched them die. The kid who was more able-bodied swam ashore wherein the murderous father waited for him and threw him back in. Now, when everyone thought this mindless, murderous, low life of a man would have been put away for good, a judge gave him 14 years prison time. As we speak he might be walking among us a free man because at the time of his sentencing he had already done a sizable portion of his time in prison. Unbelievable!
The trial judge in that case took into consideration the criminal’s state of mind, bad upbringing, supposedly poor childhood and the ever revolving drug use for his actions. In a related matter one Mr Nicholson after years of abusing his common law wife finally killed her in a brutal showdown one day right before the very eyes of their young son. In that case the judge again took into consideration the aforementioned excuses coupled with the fact that Nicholson was now a “convert” of the Seventh Day Adventist Faith. For this the judge granted him 14 years incarceration.
Now, don’t get me wrong I am happy for Nicholson and his new life, glad he’s found Christ, but I would rather have him be a preacher in prison for the rest of his life than be out in the streets. He would have been in a place where his evangelism is most effective.
Right now we have a matter of little two-year-old Kimanie who was brutally sodomised and killed in the most horrific way and immediately there is an outpouring of sympathy for the accused 15-year-old relative. Starting with family members there is the perennial “we don’t know who did it” or a phantom/ghost (a fancied word in Guyana) did it. The gaping holes in this nonsensical argument is what remotely possible could a 2-year-old do to mutilate herself this way? That infant was violated in the most terrible way any human being could endure and I urge the authorities to treat this matter with the utmost urgency.
I urge them to bring that maniacal low life to a speedy trial and have him severely punished. Have him first to undergo serious counselling then put away for a very long time. It is very clear that there is already the sentiment for him to be tried as a juvenile. I have a different view. My call is for him to be tried as an adult due to the seriousness of the crime and the prevailing atmosphere of young offenders. There are just too many of our youths who are becoming hardened criminals, a very unacceptable situation for a small developing country.
When that zero tolerance is shown it will send a clear message to other would-be criminals to desist from such activities. Barring this type of response from society’s justice system we would not see serious crime abating. What the present system of lying, excuses does, it emboldens the felon and heightens crime. We want the justice system to act as a deterrent while at the same time bring down crime. In the aforementioned situation we want justice for little Kimanie, a clear call for the rights of the child.
When society abhors crime and demand that the criminal be punished in the severest of ways, then and only then will we be able to make some headway in crushing the head of this monster, at least to manageable levels.
Lest my ideas be misconstrued, and a lot of that is going on in Guyana today, I am not calling for a police state or some large concentration camp; no, not at all, I am saying we must put the victim’s side of the debate, his/her feeling the hurt, the trauma, the pain and horrible suffering that person endured, at the centre of discussion and nothing else.
It hurts me to the core when I hear the excuses given for heinous crimes, seems that persons have become callous to the feelings of others, which makes us all a doomed society and how doomed we are only time will tell.

Guyana has become a place where certain sections of society conveniently blind their eyes to the blatant excesses of the criminal, blaming everyone and everything else save the criminal. This nonsense must stop! We must bring back decency, sanity, law and order and most of all a peaceful existence for all who live in this country.
NEIL ADAMS