Prime Minister Perry G. Christie is boasting highly about the results that the Prison Reform Committee will present soon, if not today, on its findings and recommendations on the prison system in The Bahamas.
With such heavy praise coming from the Prime Minister and with the amount of time taken by the committee to present its findings, the public will be expecting great changes.
Murders and crimes have received the bulk of media attention lately, and this has led to concerns of how such negative reports will affect the country’s image to potential visitors and investors.
However, with information now flowing freely around the world by way of the media (not only the Bahamian media), the Internet and word of mouth, individuals can know what is happening in a country almost immediately whether the data is good or bad.
So for those who think that the criminal activity happening here is not being broadcast to others around the world, they should know that those days are long gone.
The only way to make citizens and foreigners feel comfortable and to alter negative information, is for some serious changes to be made to the court and prison systems.
The police may be catching the criminals, but they are still allowed to get away because of the court system while inmates are not being rehabilitated properly so that there can be a drop to the recidivism rate, which is as high as 70 per cent.
Only when these have been improved will there be a real drop in criminal activity, so the committee really has to have some good plans or the Prime Minister’s faith in it would have been in vain.
Editorial, The Nassau Guardian
