President Irfaan Ali has issued a call for wider collaboration between the Government, Civil society and the Religious community to tackle the issue of criminality in Guyana, especially among young persons.

The President delivered an address at the opening of the Annual Senior Officers’ Conference of the Guyana Prison Service, and said Guyana and the wider region are faced with a pandemic of gangs in secondary schools, which if not tackled head on can create serious challenges for the region’s security and the prison system of various countries.

The President said it is time that the region grab the bull by its horn and get into the Secondary Schools to arrest the situation, before it becomes out of hand.

He said the move must be viewed in a broader context of a prison avoidance strategy.

“We have a pandemic of gangs in the secondary schools across the region now across the region, let’s not shy away from it, we have get into those schools, we have to get into those communities and homes, if we can bring the religious community and civil society apart of this movement and identify all the at-risk communities and broken homes in the community, identify community with stigma, if we can all of this we will be able to address this challenge at the root cause,” the President noted.

The President said the Prison Service in Guyana and the Region must be technologically and scientifically driven so that it can also play a central role in society.

“I would like to see the prison service, and every prison service in the region, develop a data-driven behavioral model, I would like to see the data on the prison population in every single country in the Caribbean and what type of music they prefer, which artiste they prefer and why they prefer it, these are important pieces of data, because music is our culture in the region,” the President noted.

It was noted that the Guyana Prison Service, along with the Guyana Police Force and the Guyana Defence Force, forms a critical part of the country’s security framework and must therefore actively contribute to shaping safer communities.

“In doing all of this we have to start identifying the roles of civil society, the religious community, the education system, influencers and who is influencing them, we have to look at that, we have to integrate these systems and organizations into the overall architecture,” the President stated.

The President acknowledged that the approach to the Prison Service has been fragmented and segmented, which he said, needs to change.

President Ali said an effective Prison Service should also include other stakeholders in law enforcement and the judiciary.

“We have to be able to integrate the two in developing a prison service that is modern, effective and efficient. Therefore, from this perspective and that of public accountability, this conference provides an opportunity to set the record straight, it allows us to highlight the tremendous work being done every day dedicated officers”, President Ali noted.

The Guyana Prison Officers’ Conference has brought together Prison Officials from Guyana and other countries in the region.

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