The Commission of Inquiry Report into the 2016 Camp Street Prison disturbances and deaths, recommended the decriminalizing of possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use and also for alternative sentencing for low-level drug offenses.

The authors of the report believe the move could have assisted in efforts to tackle overcrowding in the prison.

The James Patterson report also called on the Judiciary and Magistracy to establish and expand alternatives to incarceration for those charged with low-level drug offenses.

There continues to be arrests and incarceration for the possession of small amounts of marijuana.

The Laws of Guyana still render the possession or use of the marijuana illegal, although there has been political commitment to decriminalize marijuana possession and use.

The report which has been in the possession of the government since 2016 and was laid in the National Assembly on Thursday, called for the proportionality in sentencing and distinction between drug trafficking and other types of crime.

In fact, the report called for the re-orientation of law enforcement to target high-level drug trafficking networks, rather than those at the bottom rung of the drug trafficking ladder such as customers, small-scale farmers, low-level dealers, and mules.

The Commission believed a resuscitation of the Law Revision Commission could help with an upgrading of the legislation to address the recommendations.

“Piecemeal patching up of the Statuses of the State is to be discouraged,” the report added.

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