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INSIDE ST. MAARTEN

‘There is not only a shortage of cells, justice as a whole is struggling with scarcity’

Victim support is not available on St. Maarten. Chief Public Prosecutor Mirjam Mol experiences this as a major lack of law enforcement. As head of the public prosecutor’s office, she has got her hands full prosecuting perpetrators. In addition, due to the shortage of cells, she must decide on the early release of detainees. With the risk of new victims. “These are difficult choices,” says Mol. “The safety of society does not benefit from this.”

The Chief Public Prosecutor is very concerned about the increasing number of violent crimes. In 2019, the most common offense on St. Maarten, theft, was overtaken by violence. To gain more insight into the background of perpetrators, the St. Maarten Police Force started registering domestic violence last year. Before the domestic violence database was rigged up, the police handled a report of abuse or threat of a family member without taking into account that violence between family members is often systematic in nature. the perpetrator and victim (including underage victims) are nevertheless - and sometimes forced - permanently part of each other’s living environment. This not only increases the chance of recurrence; domestic violence can be the pressure cooker that leads to people also committing violence outside the family setting. “It’s a taboo,” says Mol. “You don’t talk about what happens in the house. There is fear. And shame. Understandable, but we do have to talk about it.” Mirjam Mol: “Even though it takes place within the privacy of the family, it concerns us all. Domestic violence has an effect on our society. I think there is a relationship between the expressions of violence that we see on the street and the violence that people experience in their own family and the seclusion of their own home. There is an absurd amount of school fights on St. Maarten, the aggressiveness among young people is worrying. We have to talk to our children. Because what is their perspective as they grow up with so much violence around them? Where does all that aggression come from? It is an issue that we pay far too little attention to on St. Maarten.”

What is the added value of the domestic violence database?

“The moment you generate figures; you can create urgency. Certainly because people have a hard time talking about domestic violence or violence against children, you cannot translate into policy without hard figures. If you are going to discuss it at the administrative level, you will soon come up against the question: what are we talking about, how big is the problem anyway? Is it about incidents, or is it a structural problem? Then you have to stay quiet, because we have never registered it. That feels annoying.”

Are there indications that there is more domestic violence in Spanish, English or Frenchspeaking households?

“Funny that you ask. In the United States, a large study has been carried out on the assumption that domestic violence mainly occurs in neighborhoods where colored people live and where incomes are low. What turned out to be, lo and behold, domestic violence is much more common in white fami-

lies, in people with high in- comes. We can assume that it occurs on all levels of the population on St. Maarten.”

In 2012, Nikil van Wijk obtained her PhD at the VU University Amster- dam on a thesis about domestic violence in Curaçao. Her research shows that 25 percent of men and 38 percent of women in Curaçao have experienced domestic vi- olence. When childhood is involved, it appears that half of the population of Curaçao has experienced domestic violence.

“I think the situation on St. Maarten is not much different. I am very concerned about the children who grow up here in an atmosphere of aggressiveness and violence. Young people quickly grab a weapon - not directly a fire- arm, it can also be an iron bar or a club. Disagreement is not finished, it is action reaction: you say something that I don’t like, you look at me and I don’t like it, so I take it out on you. Violence as an outlet for pent-up frustrations. Until someone picks up a firearm, and it re- ally gets serious. Let’s face it: there are a lot of firearms on St. Maarten.”

How does the Public Prosecution Service view firearms possession?

“Whoever has an illegal fire- arm, threatens or shoots with it, ends up in jail. It’s that simple. The Miss Lalie Center for Detention of Boys was reopened last year and I am glad that this gives us the opportunity again to keep young men who are in possession of firearms off the street. But when it comes to girls, we have a problem. There are no detention fa- cilities on St. Maarten for criminal girls. There is a sec- tion for adult women in the Point Blanche prison. A few women are currently locked up there.”

A year ago, the Nether- lands supplied container cells to put an end to the cell deficit on St. Maarten.

“This has been discussed for a long time, yes, the expan- sion of cell capacity. But those container cells have not yet been installed, have they? They are currently piled up against a wall of the prison. I hope that those container cells can be made operational in the short term, because we need extra cells.”

Without connection to water and electricity, without coordination, su- pervision and safety mea- sures, these container cells are of no use?

“A plan must be made. That is not a task of the Public Prosecution Service, the gov- ernment must arrange this. Extra cells mean that more security personnel are need- ed. The prison has long been struggling with a dire short- age of guards. In the end it’s all about money. More staff means more costs. There is no unwillingness on the part of St. Maarten. Scarcity is a concept on this island: scarcity of qualified people, expertise, facilities. Above all, there is a structural short- age of financial resources. We come up against that every day at the Public Prosecution Service. We must always try to come up with the cheap- est possible solutions and use people as creatively as possible to ensure that it costs as little as possible.”

There is no money to in- stall the container cells. Yet the Netherlands says: this is the responsibility of the government of St. Maarten.

“I understand everyone’s frustration. It looks like a Catch 22, we can’t figure it out. The Consensus King- dom Acts stipulate that there must be a prison on the islands, a public pros- ecutor, judiciary, police, bor- der control, but the King- dom does not determine how this should or can be achieved. That is the re- sponsibility of the countries within the Kingdom, since 10-10-10. My salary is paid by the Ministry of Justice of St. Maarten, and therefore by the taxpayer on St. Maarten. The budget of Justice on St. Maarten is not sufficient for what we want to achieve in the field of law enforcement. If you see what the police are able to achieve here with the scarce resources at their disposal, with a structural shortage of per- sonnel, that is admirable. Hats off! The police and other investigation services are functioning better and more criminals are being arrested. And so the short- age of cells in prison is in- creasing. We are now again at the point where we must release prisoners early to free up cell space for newly convicted people.”

How many convicts are at home with an ankle bracelet?

“Zero.”

There is no Electronic Supervision?

“No, we don’t have that on St. Maarten. I wish it were there, that would mean a reduction of the cell deficiency. We have ankle bracelets, a protocol has been drawn up about how we should deal with that, but people have to be deployed for supervision and there is no money for that. For a long time, there has been a request for additional assistance for Electronic Supervision from the Ministry of Justice.”

You notice that the tension, the frustration increases, you see the reactions in the media. What needs to happen to break the circle?

“If I only knew ... I’m just the Public Prosecution Service, I don’t represent the Government of St. Maarten. I think a lot about it and try to contribute to a solution by talking openly about the problem, as I am doing with you now. To show what we encounter every day. I try to inform my administrators, the Minister of Justice, as well as possible about what is going on. I sound the alarm bell from time to time, expecting the government to continue with it.”

Is it being followed up?

“Yes. But urgent matters have not been given the necessary priority, at least it does not lead to solutions.”

If you are faced with the decision to release a prisoner early, what are the considerations?

“These are difficult choices. I am not inclined to release someone who has committed an armed robbery earlier. Then I would rather opt for the burglar, someone who is incarcerated for theft. That may seem obvious, but it is not. In prison there are a number of socalled revolving door criminals, men who constantly commit small crimes. You know beforehand that if you release them, they will immediately start stealing again.”

How many revolving door criminals are there on St. Maarten?

“If I look at the names that are common in our public prosecutor’s office, I think there are between five and ten. That does not seem like much, but if each of them commits 10 burglaries before they are caught again, it will have a huge impact, certainly in such a small community as St. Maarten. And you have a large stream of tourists here, you have to take that into account too.”

To what extent does alcohol and drug addiction play a role?

“That is a structural problem. On St. Maarten there is no special institution for drug addict detainees. Public safety would benefit if we were able to offer addicts the necessary assistance. This also applies to people with a men

tal disorder. The Mental Health Foundation on St. Maarten does what it can, but also has to contend with scarcity.”

To come back to victims; who can they turn to now?

“The Public Prosecution Service provides victims with information, lets them know when the court case is scheduled and explains how they can submit a claim. What we miss on St. Maarten is a Victim Support Office, an organization that can provide initial relief and serves as a contact for victims. Law enforcement on St. Maarten is very offenderoriented: the offender gets a lawyer for his defense, gets help from the probation service and other assistance. We should also be concerned about the victim, who must also be able to tell his story.”

The message is: do not cut back on tackling crime?

“Certainly! Invest in safety. That means strengthening the law enforcement chain, ensuring that the police are strong, that the investigation services can do their job well. It also means investing in prevention; it is always better to prevent crime than to try to repair the damage afterwards. That is the weakness of criminal law, that it only asserts itself after the events. The Public Prosecution Service can only take action when a criminal offense has been committed, when it is actually too late.”

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