NASSAU, Bahamas, CMC—The Home of Meeting on Wednesday tabled long-awaited anti-gang laws that may see gang members resist 25 years in jail.
The laws detailed how gang membership may very well be confirmed – with proof, together with individuals’s clothes, tattoos, physique markings, indicators, or codes of their possession. Different proof included confessions or proof of prison exercise.
Below the Anti-Gang Invoice 2024, a police officer may additionally arrest an individual and not using a warrant if there’s “cheap trigger” to consider the individual is a gang member, gang chief, or concerned in gang exercise.
The invoice was handed because the nation continues to grapple with a homicide fee that has seen 37 homicides thus far this yr, a number of of which have been linked to gang retaliation.
At the beginning of the yr, Prime Minister Philip “Courageous” Davis promised that his administration would introduce the “hardest anti-gang laws ever.”
Inside the invoice, a “gang” is a mix of three or extra people who find themselves formally or informally organized and act alone or with one another in gang-related exercise.
Below the invoice, the Minister of Nationwide Safety can apply to the Supreme Court docket to declare {that a} group of individuals is a gang if there are “cheap grounds” to consider the group is concerned in gang exercise.
Any individual aggrieved by the choice can attraction the choice to the Court docket of Enchantment inside 21 days.
The brand new invoice additionally outlined proof that might show membership in a gang and stated gang involvement may result in imprisonment for a number of offenses.
Below the invoice, an individual who’s a gang chief or gang member will be jailed for as much as 25 years. Moreover, an individual who commits an offense as a gang chief or gang member or intimidates one other individual into becoming a member of a gang may very well be jailed for as much as seven years.
Gang exercise was described as numerous acts of crime, together with recruiting others to affix gangs, retaliatory violence, kidnapping an individual, threatening somebody, or benefiting from a gang.
An individual engaged in gang-related exercise may very well be liable to a effective of US$100,000 or be jailed for as much as 25 years. Any gang member concerned in an act that results in dying may face life in jail.
Anybody harboring a gang member is also jailed – with a potential sentence of as much as 25 years. If the gang member or gang chief is a toddler, then the guardian can be convicted for harboring them.
Inside the invoice, an individual who recruits one other individual to affix a gang may very well be jailed for as much as 20 years. An individual who recruits a toddler may face a 25-year sentence.
Anybody committing obstruction of justice by intimidating, threatening, or providing bribes to justice system members is also jailed for as much as 25 years.
The invoice additionally makes provisions for forfeiture of the property of a gang or property supposed for gang-related actions. This additionally extends to anybody who knowingly advantages from gang-related exercise.
Associated
