Latest update March 28th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 09, 2016 News
There was a noticeable increase in the volume of social problems during the past year. This was the informed disclosure of Chief Probation and Social Services Officer within the Ministry of Social Protection, Mr. Forbes Munroe, recently.
In order to tackle the mounting social problems, Munroe disclosed that there are plans apace to ensure that “We have a comparable response in dealing with these (issues) that are out there in the society.”
This is particularly important, since a merger of the Probation and Family Welfare Department with the Social Security Department in 2005 resulted in a tedious volume of work for officers attached to the Department Munroe heads. “We have now found it prudent as a result to delink the services so that we can have a better response to the demand as it relates to social issues in our society,” Munroe informed.
Moreover, to improve its efficiency, he disclosed, “We are further looking to sectionalise and thus far we have such sections within the Department such as Research and Development which has to do with training and also community outreach.”
“We also have a Youth Development section of the Department and that seeks to deal with issues as it relates to youth delinquency in our society and also issues pertaining to families,” said Munroe as he considered that “we recognise that you just cannot divorce issues related to children from the family.”
Adopting the broaden perspective approach, according to Munroe, would allow the Ministry to deal with delinquent children while simultaneously, giving attention to the issues within families in which children are expected to be nurtured. The intent of this approach, according to Munroe, is to ensure that the families help to produce the conditions that are conducive to the positive development of children.
As part of its efforts to combat the prevailing social challenges, initiatives are also on the cards to direct specific focus to what is happening in communities. And according to Munroe, “For years we have been trying to reach out to men and that has been posing a challenge but we recognise that men are very much involved in sports and so within our department we have set up a section that deals (specifically) with (men in) communities.”
“We are hoping that through this section we can reach men through sports and other such activities. That commenced last year and it has already started to bear fruit,” said the Chief Probation Officer.
According to him too, the Probation and Social Services Department, as its name suggest, is also tasked with dealing with probation issues. And Munroe disclosed that a key role is to deal with sentence management as it relates to persons who are brought before the realm of the court to be prosecuted.
“We want to ensure that they are not only sent to prison and have custodial sentences, but we want to look at three aspects of justice within society and that is security, rehabilitation and we want to look at reintegration of persons who might be placed before the court,” explained Munroe.
He highlighted the importance of security in the prison system even as he pointed to the need to ensure that it is not overpopulated, a situation that could in fact pose a great challenge to security.
“We recognise that the Probation Department has a big role to play in that, and so we want to ensure that with the alternative sentencing the Probation Department can play a great role in reducing the number of persons who are sent to prison,” Munroe intimated.
Rather than custodial sentences, Munroe spoke of persons instead being placed under supervision. “Persons can be placed on probation, particularly first offenders and persons who are charged with not so grave offences…We are looking at that presently and we also want to ensure that we can provide the court with such information that the courts seeks, so that in their adjudication in cases those decisions can be made,” Munroe noted.
Aiding the rehabilitation of offenders, he asserted, is one of the main goals of the Probation and Social Services Department. And this is due to the fact that “we don’t want situations where persons are placed in prison without any proper work being done with them in terms of rehabilitation.”
Particular consideration is given to those considered to be in the peak of their labour years, according to Munroe, who pointed out that such persons should not just be taken out of society, but rather reformed and be integrated into society.
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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