Police trained in Mediation and Alternative Dispute Resolution

As you may have heard before, IMPACT Justice is a Canadian Government-funded project that is being implemented from the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies in Barbados. The main component of the project is the drafting of legislation that can be ratified by CARICOM states to tackle injustices that persons within the region face. But another important component of the project is alternative dispute resolution, which was the core of the training today at the Radisson Fort George. Thirty-eight police officers from across the country participated in the training. The project intends to use mediation as a way to settle disputes before it reaches the court system.

Velma Newton

Prof. Velma Newton, Regional Project Director of IMPACT Justice

“We are training community development officers, probation officers and so on…and police; we’ve trained police now in most countries in the region, just a few left. And the reason why we are training police officers and persons working with social services is that we believe that they can be very influential in deflecting cases from the courts because when there is a dispute in the home or anywhere else really, the police are the first persons you turn to. So it is important that the police know how to conduct themselves when conflict arises. I believe they use many of the ADR components already, mediation techniques already, but this will be formal training for them. We have among the Belize contingent; we have inspectors, we have corporals…we have representatives from all ranks and from throughout the country. So what we are hoping is that these persons can go back and put what they’ve learned formally into practice.”