Deputy Police Commissioner Erwin Boyce says the Barbados Police Service is implementing changes in the organisation to help move it away from its colonial past.
He made the promise on Thursday during the evening session of the Crime Prevention Symposium held at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus under the theme From Research to Action: Focused Approaches to Crime Prevention.
Boyce said there is a heavy influence of colonial era laws and policing customs on the Barbados Police Service and other security forces in the region, and authorities here have been grappling with modernising and updating much of the policies governing their operations.
“The Barbados Police Service has been around from 1835, and you would imagine that over those years, we have gone through a lot of changes, a lot of colonial-driven activities that would have shaped the thinking of the police leadership prior to Independence.
“One of the greatest inputs in understanding policing in this modern era is the engagement of the community. Some people refer to it as community policing, some people refer to it as problem-solving policing…. Community neighbourhood policing is the philosophy of the organisation. The organisation exists because we need to have that level of interaction in order to make society safe,” the senior lawman said.
His comments came in response to the virtual presentation by Dr Janeille Zorina Matthews, Lecturer in Criminal Law in the Faculty of Law at UWI Cave Hill, on the Criminal Justice System, Modern Responses and Changes in Criminality. She said that despite the best intentions over the years to revamp policing and laws in the region, the effects of the colonial era still lingered.
“When you read the penal history, it’s mind blowing [to me] as a contemporary criminal justice scholar, how little has changed. When you look at the 19th century and now, you are seeing that we still have high rates of incarceration as compared to the rest of the world, we still have overcrowded prisons, we still have physical abuse in prisons, we still have scarce human and physical resources, there is still lengthy pre-trial detention, there is still lack of access to educational programmes,” she said.
“Colonial officials operate on stereotypes, and government officials stepping into those shoes, in the structure that we have inherited, often perpetuate those same stereotypes.”
Deputy Police Commissioner Boyce who, admitted that the institution has been steeped in colonial customs for much of his history, emphasised that the local police force was changing to better service the modern Barbadian society.
“A lot of changes are happening in our service to enable us to have a better understanding of what are the needs of society, what are the expectations of society and how are we going to address the issues of working with society. Perhaps one of the greater [advances] has been technology; technology has allowed us to create the type of platforms that allow us to focus not on gut feeling policing but on evidence based policing,” he said.
(SB)
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