Gun offenders face a double legal reckoning: not only may fines for unlicensed firearms be abolished as a sentencing option, but proposed legislation would permanently bar such convictions from ever being wiped from an offender’s criminal record.
Just weeks after a High Court judge announced that paying fines for unlicensed firearms may soon become a thing of the past, Justice Laurie-Anne Smith-Bovell told a self-confessed gun man in Supreme Court No. 4 that under forthcoming legislation, firearm offences will no longer be expungeable from a convicted person’s record.
Last December, then attorney general Dale Marshall outlined to the House of Assembly several revisions proposed in the Criminal Records (Rehabilitation of Offenders) (Amendment) Bill that would allow offenders, including those with lengthy prison terms, to have their convictions wiped after 15 years without reoffending. But the most serious crimes, such as murder, rape, child exploitation and firearms offences, will remain permanently ineligible for expungement.
Speaking on Friday during a sentencing hearing Justice Smith-Bovell said: “We would have heard that the time is fast approaching where fines would no longer be an option if deterrence does not work. And young people also need to be aware, there is now legislation where you will not be able to expunge gun offences.
“So whereas now you can get your record expunged after a certain amount of time if you got a firearm offence, the proposed legislation now states that firearm offences will no longer be expunged.”
Noting the apparent trend of gun offenders “finding” firearms, she therefore warned them to “leave the firearms where you find them”.
She said: “Firearms seem to be the easiest thing to find in Barbados. They don’t find money. They don’t find food. They don’t find oil. The only thing out there to be found is firearms. They need to leave them where they see them. Call the police. Don’t take them up…Let somebody else find them other than you.”
The legislation to overhaul the criminal records expungement laws has been referred to the parliamentary select committee on governance and social policy for public consultation.
(JB)
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