Support for top prosecutor

At least one attorney-at-law agrees that inmates who behave badly at HMP Dodds should not be rewarded with discounted sentences.

Queen’s Counsel Andrew Pilgrim told Barbados TODAY that he fully agrees with Deputy Director of Prosecution Alliston Seale, who has blasted the decision to award all inmates a three-month discount off each year regardless of how they behave.

Describing it as a “joke of the criminal justice system in Barbados” Seale recently contended that discounts should not be given to those inmates who are troublesome.

He made the comments after a prison official revealed that the three-month reduction is given to all prisoners serving sentences at the St Philip penal institution.

Pilgrim, a prominent and outspoken attorney-at-law told Barbados TODAY it made absolutely no sense to reward bad behaviour.

“I support and agree with everything that Mr Seale has said. I’ve made these points before but good behaviour has to be good behaviour. It has to make sense,” he maintained.

“The question may be for the prison entirely to determine what it means for people to do infractions, how they punish them or whether that means they lose the remission. But even as a defense lawyer it is difficult for me to sit here and say that people go up to prison, behave bad and get the benefit of what is for good behaviour. That cannot be right.”

Pilgrim also suggested that inmates should be given further reductions in their sentences if they enroll in educational programmes while in prison.

He said such incentives would encourage incarcerated persons to see prison as somewhere where they can improve their lives.

He said without that impetus inmates might not see the need to take part in the variety of programmes available to them.

“By the same token I would like to see a system where if people agree to do educational programmes or work programmes that they benefit perhaps from a further remission. In other words, if you go up there and you don’t do anything and you close your month you get three months off but if you go up there and you work and you do an apprenticeship to become a skilled person or you go and study English or Maths or Principles of Business or whatever, maybe you are eligible for two further months,” Pilgrim pointed out.

“It would motivate people to treat prison as a facility to rehabilitate themselves as opposed to somewhere where you just go and idle or worst to go there and behave as you like.” (RB)