SOME 65 trainers from across the Caribbean on Friday began training at a five-day “Regional Train the Trainers Workshop on Restorative Justice: The Sycamore Tree Project” here at the Grand Coastal Hotel, on the East Coast Demerara.
The in-prison programme is intended to contribute to recidivism reduction, and prisoner rehabilitation, through interaction between unrelated victims and offenders to discuss crime and its impact.

The programme is being funded by the European Union (EU) as a component of the 10th European Development Fund Crime and Violence Prevention and Social Development Project, and is expected to be first rolled out in Guyana, Trinidad, and Suriname in the coming weeks.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the workshop on Friday afternoon, Head of the European Union Delegation to Guyana and Suriname, Jernej Videtic, noted the need for alternative measures from punitive policies in dealing with prisoners.

“Contrary to common belief, lengthy severe punishment does not change behaviour; we have to move beyond increasingly punitive policies which have caused prison populations to grow at much faster rates than reported crime,” he noted.

In Guyana, the prison population at several prisons is grossly overpopulated. Like most Caribbean countries, Guyana, too, suffers from a high recidivism rates. The Sycamore Tree Project has been known to help reduce the recidivism rate.
According to its website: “The programme can have profound effects on the victims and offenders. Many victims have reported receiving a measure of healing.

“Offenders confront, many times for the first time, the harm their actions have had on other people. Studies have shown that offenders who go through the Sycamore Tree Project have significant changes in attitudes that make it less likely they will reoffend once released.”

The Sycamore Tree Project is one of several ventures in prison rehabilitation that the EU has been promoting across the Caribbean. Other projects include the “Drug Demand Reduction Project”, “Crime Prevention Project”, “Support to the Security System in the Caribbean”, and the “Support Criminal Justice in the Caribbean”.

“The objective is to decrease the level of incarceration, and particularly pre-trial incarceration, in the Caribbean. We have to break the vicious circle that people get out prison only to land back in court and find themselves once again behind bars for repeat offences,” Videtic said.

Videtic stressed that these programmes are by no means to be seen as a way of taking away from the effect of punishment for criminals.
“We don’t want to be soft on crime, but effective on crime,” he explained
“It is fundamental not to see restorative justice as some kind of alternative to the criminal justice system. What is needed is that restorative principles are embedded in the criminal justice system as a whole.”

Giving an insight into how the project will work in Guyana, CARICOM Secretariat Crime and Security Programme Manager, Sherwin Toyne-Stephenson said that prisoners and victims will sit down and go through an eight-week programme, where a facilitator leads the participants in conversations about subjects related to crime and justice.
As each eight-week programme ends, another will begin.

It is expected that each eight-week programme will involve some 30 participants, ideally hoped to comprise of half prisons and half victims. According to assessments, Toyne-Stephenson noted, the project is expected to be very sustainable.

This project comes on stream as Guyana looks towards doing several upgrades to prisons and the prison system. Some $35.6B (US$170.1M) has been allocated to the security sector in the 2019 Budget, of which sum $4B will go towards the development of the country’s prison system.