One of three Bills, passed in the Anguilla House of Assembly on Tuesday, April 20, was the Child Justice Act. And the mover, the Minister of Social Development and Education, Ms. Dee-Ann Kentish-Rogers, said its implementation would put Anguilla ahead of the region. The Act is aimed at giving children, in conflict with the law, second chances.
In introducing the draft legislation, the Minister said: “This Bill intends to change the age of criminal responsibility; to introduce diversion into the criminal justice system; to create more sentencing options for children in conflict with the law; and to use, in some cases, current departments [such as] the Department of Probation, and the Department of Social Development, to care for our children who are in conflict with the law.
“This, Madam Speaker, was something that was very close to my heart and something that I campaigned about in 2019/2020. It was always my firmly-held belief that children should not be subject to the harshest part of the law, the first time that they commit an offence.
“This piece of legislation actually takes Anguilla ahead of the region because the criminal age of responsibility in the region varies, but Anguilla will be ahead of the region by virtue of our rebuttable position of criminal capacity at the age of 14. In one sense, we are ahead of the United Kingdom and many other places in the world…I want our people to continue to learn how to refer to our children as children. I know that in Caribbean societies we think about our children as adults very early, but we need to be able to amend the way we think about our children to do them justice in their lives.”
Earlier, Minister Kentish-Rogers stressed that there was a need to give children a second chance regardless of the unlawful acts they might have committed. She went on: “It is fundamentally easier for us as individual members in community, and collective communities, to turn our backs on issues affecting children and saying – ‘that’s somebody else’s problem’. No second chances. But the reality is, Madam Speaker, is that we live in a very, very small community, and if I can say so – in my personal estimation – and I speak for no one else – a very unforgiving community.
“But the message that we intend to send to those children, coming into conflict with the law, is that your identity cannot be solely defined by the worst thing you ever done. Just as it is not right to define a person solely by the best thing they ever done, you should not define a person by the worst thing they ever done. The message to the children is: it is all the stuff in the grey area in between that makes you who you are.”
Minister Kentish-Rogers, added: “As an Administration, we want to ensure that…we are not labelling our children unfairly; that they can’t get rid of a label placed on them; that they can’t get a job because of a criminal record that they are masked by when they were 14, 15 and 16. It is precisely because we are such a small community why we need to give grace to our young people…and we don’t want to fail them in our interventions, Madam Speaker. We don’t want to continue the cycle that led them to the criminal justice system in the first place.
“I know that we have a long way to go before we change the attitudes of the community in dealing with children in relation to conflict with the law. But we could not wait until the attitude of everyone changed before we brought this Bill to the House because, in the meantime, there are children who deserve second chances.”
In addition to the Child Justice Act, two other pieces of legislation were passed during the sitting of the House. One was the Recording of Court Proceedings (Amendment) Act 2021, moved by the Attorney General, Mr. Dwight Horsford; and the Resort Residence Annual Levy Act, 2021, moved by the Minister of Economic Development, Mr. Kyle Hodge.
