House passes Mediation Bill with no mediation for crime

The House of Representatives on Friday passed two related Bills - the Mediation (Number 2) Bill 2003 and Family Proceedings (Number 2) Bill 2003.

The Mediation Bill empowers a Mediation Board to accredit mediation training, certify mediators and approve mediation agencies. The Family Proceedings Bill lets a court instead refer a family dispute to mediation. The Bill also allows a court to use mediation, counselling and conciliation as an alternative to the use of probation officers. In the House and in the Senate from which they came, the Bills were dealt with together. Opposition MP for Pointe-a-Pierre, Gillian Lucky, slammed the Government for removing petty criminal offences from the scope of mediation. “No one in the Government has given a reason why mediation in criminal matters has to be discontinued.” Recalling her days as a prosecutor, Lucky said the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) dealt with serious matters like capital crimes. She assured: “Mediation in criminal matters never dealt with very serious matters”.

Saying that serious crimes like rape and incest should go through the criminal process in the courts, Lucky explained: “Our first suggestion would have been to expand the category of the petty (criminal) offences allowed to be mediated...Many magistrates told me they were happy that mediation reduced their waiting lists of petty matters, so that serious offences like kidnapping and rape could be dealt with.” Lucky said the current legislation was not good enough. “The mediation centres should have remained open...Taking away mediation from certain criminal matters will create a backlog you will not be able to remove until years later.” To illustrate her point she revealed that in the DPP’s Office, some eight out of nine posts for Senior State Prosecutors were currently vacant, with the sole occupied post being filled by someone merely acting in the position.

In reply Attorney General John Jeremie was unrepentant. He said: “Criminal matters are outside the remit of this legislation — deliberately so.” Domestic violence for example, he said, was excluded from the Bills because such matters in his view did not lend themselves to mediation. Jeremie said the Bills had made the Mediation Board more transparent and open to scrutiny. “It is a measure to insulate the process from the politicians,” he added. The House will next meet tomorrow at 10 am when the Finance Committee will sit.