'Mother' Pratt calls for Draconian measures to curb violence

By NICO SCAVELLA

URBAN Renewal Co-chair Cynthia “Mother” Pratt said yesterday that the government needs to pass “draconian laws” in order to effectively combat the incidents of violent crime and murder that plague the country.

Mrs Pratt, who served as minister of national security in the first Christie administration, said that with the number of murders steadily mounting the government has no choice but to introduce harsher laws to curb the violence.

However, Mrs Pratt also rejected assertions that Urban Renewal, the government’s highly touted social intervention plan, has failed. She said crime would be much worse if the programme was not around.

“Some things take Draconian measures,” she told The Tribune on the sidelines of an Urban Renewal Commission Back to School event. “Your people will cry out. They’ll cry out when the murders increase. When you take Draconian measures they’ll cry out again, but you have to do what you have to do if it’s to bring safety to all of us.”

However, Mrs Pratt did not elaborate on the stiff measures that she thinks needs to be introduced.

(Draco was the first legislator of Athens in Ancient Greece in the 7th century BC. He replaced the prevailing system of oral law and blood feud by a written code to be enforced only by a court. His laws demanded a very strict code of conduct and unusually severe or cruel forms of punishment – death included – for both trivial and serious crimes. Since then, the term “Draconian” has been used to describe repressive legal measures).

Capital punishment is still an applicable punishment for murder in the Bahamas, however, no one has been executed since January 6, 2000 when David Mitchell was hanged.

The London-based Privy Council declared in 2006 that the country’s mandatory death penalty upon a murder conviction was unconstitutional, prompting the government to specify in 2011 which categories of murders are “the worst of the worst” and therefore warrant the sentence of death.

Crown prosecutors last year sought the death penalty for six men in four separate murder cases.

Last year, Kofhe Goodman was sentenced to death for the murder of 11-year-old Marco Archer.

“I know the prime minister wants to do a number of things, but his hands are tied,” Mrs Pratt added. “I don’t want to discuss the political side in it because he has to go through many things to get some things changed, but I know he would like very much to put down some Draconian measures.”

Mrs Pratt also said that Urban Renewal is still an effective way to combat crime going forward, and dismissed the notion that the organisation’s efforts are “dwarfed” or “counterproductive”.

“The question is: ‘What if Urban Renewal wasn’t here?’” she asked. “If we don’t do this, stop and think how much more crime we would have. The thousand that are in the band, those that we are helping off the streets right now, what would happen to them? Where would they be? So we have to look at what we are doing to prevent them from becoming criminals, because if we had these things before, we might not have been to this point.

“Many of those men who are criminals today were little boys. Now today, we’re talking about preventing these ones from becoming worse, because they are coming up. If they live in a house with a criminally-minded big brother, he’s going to feed it into them, and you’ll have another generation. So that’s what we need to talk about.”

Up to press time, the country had recorded 84 murders for the year, according to The Tribune’s records.

Comments

GrassRoot says...

yawn.

Posted 28 August 2014, 12:15 p.m. Suggest removal

HolandObserver says...

hmmmmmm

Posted 28 August 2014, 12:34 p.m. Suggest removal

ThisIsOurs says...

Mother Prat is a good woman, but seriously, UR as it is is nothing more than social services. It could be more if they knew what they were doing but right now they hand out grocery, social services and tear down old buildings and weed yards environmental health. They have policemen walking about in the community but policemen should be doing than anyway, so I'm lost what the intent if UR in current firm really is.

Posted 28 August 2014, 1:10 p.m. Suggest removal

Altalk says...

I really believe if UR wasnt molested by The FNM in 2007....I do believe that murder rates would of been a little lower...

Posted 28 August 2014, 7:26 p.m. Suggest removal

SP says...

Pratt is posturing up the wrong tree!...No mention of corruption in the halls of Parliament?

There is no reason for crime to be so high in Bahamas.

Firstly we need to get rid of all the crooks in the good old boys club and politics.

Corrupt politicians are the fist hurdle that must be dealt with if we are to get control of crime. Throw these scum in jail in the first instance.

Secondly implement punishments similar to that of Singapore which has one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/singapore-s-c…

This whole crime problem could be brought under control in 4 Months or less if WE THE PEOPLE got serious with the corruption we all acknowledge and discuss daily that exist in the halls of Parliament!

Posted 28 August 2014, 8:33 p.m. Suggest removal

Honestman says...

So very very true.

Posted 29 August 2014, 11:59 a.m. Suggest removal

concernedcitizen says...

As long as single mother of 5 for 3 dead beat dads is the norm crime will continue to climb .I,m not a bible thumper i just believe in being responsible sexually .Funny you never ever here the "preachermens ' talking about this as most of their members and some of their sex partners are single females ..

Posted 2 September 2014, 2:27 p.m. Suggest removal

Log in to comment