Applications Open for Expungement of Criminal Records Under Justice Reform Initiative

Applications are now being accepted for processing as they relate to the expungement of criminal records.  With a Criminal Records Board now in place, the Office of the Attorney General in collaboration with the Ministry of Human Development and the Ministry of Home Affairs announced today that applications can now be filed for review.  It was just last month that the Criminal Record Expungement Services were introduced as part of the criminal justice reform initiative.  At the start of the year, Police Commissioner Chester Williams, spoke with Love News on several moves taking place under the reform.

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police: “The main one for me is the plea bargaining issue where we can now engage in plea bargaining with accused persons. Again this is going to significantly expedite a number of cases where there may not be a need to have a full fledged litigation. When I say that I mean going through the court process of calling witnesses and these sorts of things. If you can bring parties to the table and have a mediator there to see how they can mediate with a view to resolve the issue that is going to help tremendously and this is done particularly in cases where these minor cases, maybe involving families or so forth. Another one for us is the fact that you can now ask the court for a sentence indication as a part of plea bargaining. So again if you are charged, for example, with wounding or grievous harm you can ask the court for a sentencing indication, the court will tell you okay based on x,y,z ,the sentence might be this or that and then based on that you can decide if you will plea guilty and take the sentence as indicated by the court. Now even though the court may issues a sentencing indication it does not mean that if you were to plea guilty that it is going to be that sentence. It can still be less or more but for the most part the court is going to stay within a range that they will go by in the event that you plead guilty. So that again expedites the process. So instead of you having to go through a whole trie, you’ll believe you commit the crime, you want to take responsibility, you ask the court for sentence indication and then based on that you decide to plea guilty and again a guilty plea also reduces your sentence by one third. So as opposed to going through a trial where having wasted the court’s time and whatever you don’t get the ability so the court will look at different factors particularly the mitigating factors and aggravating factors of the crime that you are accused of committing and based on those factors the court is going to determine whatever sentence that they may impose on you. Even in the high court we used to see cases talk like three, four years to be heard now we’re seeing cases coming up within a year and a half, two years so we’re seeing cases coming up more quickly now. I must commend the Chief Justice for the excellent job that she has been doing in reforming the court system. We have seen tremendous changes. As a matter of fact even when it comes to the convictions we’re seeing more and more people getting convicted for murders now. So in the past when you used to hear Belizeans say we have a 3% conviction rate for murder right now I think we’re above 50% in terms of murder convictions. So again the fact that the cases are being heard more quickly it lends for the greater availability for witnesses to go to court and also with the use of technology our surveillance camera systems we’re now using as well in court. Those are also helping to increase the amount of convictions we’re seeing in our courts. “

Application forms to have a criminal record erase can be obtained countrywide at the offices of the Ministry of Human Development office, in Belmopan at the Ministry of Home Affairs office in Belmopan, as well as on the website, www.homeaffairs.gov.bz.