WITTER... they should contribute to the welfare of their victim

Persons convicted of serious crimes should be put to work while serving time in order to earn money to compensate their victims or their victims' families, Public Defender Earl Witter has suggested.

"...That they should contribute to the welfare of their victims, who they have helped or caused to be victimised, there can be no question," Witter said.

Witter's comments was in response to a suggestion by an attendant of the United Nation Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation-sponsored regional workshop on the media and the Caribbean justice system at the Hilton Hotel in Kingston on Thursday.

He later told the Observer that it would not be unreasonable for victims, particularly those who suffer indirectly, to benefit from such compensation.

The public defender said that these inmates could be put to work in areas such as the penal system's farm-work programme.

According to Witter, the system would have to be brought into play by legislation, but said there were "some serious issues" that would first have to be addressed.

These issues, Witter said, include questions like whether this would do away with civil litigation arising from criminal offences, what would be the compensation package, how much of the money made by the convict should go towards the victims or their families, what percentage should be put aside to assist the convict on release from prison, and how much of the money earned would go toward facilitating the housing of the inmate in a humane way at the respective correctional facility?

Notwithstanding the challenges, Witter was confident that it could be done as is the case in other jurisdictions such as England and Trinidad and Tobago.

"It would be a momentous development in our penal and legal system," he told the Observer yesterday.