The United States Government is investing an additional US$850,000 to support the Criminal Justice System in Guyana bringing the total investment to US$1.7M.
The United States Embassy in Georgetown disclosed in a statement on Tuesday that the timeline of the project has also been extended to March 2021.
The project “Strengthen the Criminal Justice System in Guyana” initially started in 2016 and would have originally ended in 2019. It is being funded by the U.S. Embassy, through the Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL).
According to the U.S Embassy, “the project so far has built the [Guyana Police Force’s] nascent forensic video analysis (FVA) capacity. The GPF has used FVA methodology and equipment in the successful prosecution of several cases.”
The project is expected to continue to build capacity within the Guyana Police Force, the Chambers of the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) and other justice sectors.
Training and technical assistance were done so far in cases of management in major crimes, crime scene management, evidence management, chain of custody and law enforcement supervisory skills.
Police Officers and other justice officials are expected to be fully equipped to successfully and professionally investigate and prosecute criminal evidence-based cases at the completion of the project.
The statement further said, “The Embassy notes the work of the Government of Guyana to ensure the security of its citizens, counter transnational crime, and increase effective and timely prosecutions, and is pleased to collaborate with Guyana on these efforts.”
The implementation of the project is being done by the Justice Education Society (JES) of British Columbia, Canada.
