The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 2005 (PACE) will not revolutionise Bermuda?s criminal justice system unless the Island?s dilapidated Police Stations and court rooms are also upgraded, the Shadow Attorney General said.

Trevor Moniz, Shadow Minister of Legislative Affairs, Justice, Telecommunications and E-Commerce, kicked off debate on the PACE bill at a special sitting of the House of Assembly yesterday by saying Government has had seven years to do something but had not yet broken ground on the justice system?s infrastructure.

?We have had two Premier?s houses renovated but nothing on the courts and station situation. I agree with what is being done and encourage Government to get on with it,? Mr. Moniz said. ?I am glad the PLP has decided to take this on and tidy things up. However, it is not sufficient in and of itself while there is still a need to improve the physical plant.?

Most prisoners were raised by teenage single mothers, Mr. Moniz said.

?We have deep social problems but it is not a racial thing,? he said. ?If you look around the world you see prisons are full of poorer people and you find a correlation between children of single mothers and prisoners.?

Westgate was 80 to 90 percent full of the children of single teen mothers, he said, however, society had ignored this problem because it did not want to hear it.

In the same way, he did not blame the misbehaviour of unruly students on their teachers but instead on their parents.

Mr. Moniz said Bermuda?s justice system should get back to basics.

?You can get caught up in technicalities in both the civil and criminal side and you can end up chasing your own tail,? he said. ?Generally that?s the move here today. The law should be transparent, clear and practical.?

Mr. Moniz said Bermuda shared similarities and differences with the climate from which PACE was born in the UK after the Brixton riots in 1981.

Similarly, Bermuda was experiencing cultural changes, increased crime and increased disrespect for law and order, he said.

?We also have something here that is a reflection from the US,? he said. ?A gangster cultural ethic which includes disrespect for women and the law. These are definitely rebels without a cause who please themselves with drugs and sex.?

Mr. Moniz said Attorney General Larry Mussenden, who was also the president of the Bermuda Football Association, knew of the lawlessness and mayhem at football grounds.

He said recent amendments to the criminal code that outlawed bladed articles with draconian prison sentences were knee-jerk reactions to violence in sporting grounds.

However, Mr. Moniz agreed that PACE would codify and provide a framework for the rights and duties of all parties in the criminal justice system, including Police, lawyers and judges.

PACE would be a great challenge to the Bermuda Police Service, he said, as it currently operated under the old Judge?s Rules, which PACE would replace with currently unwritten Codes of Conduct.

As PACE would not be in force until January 2007, he hoped the new Codes of Conduct would be debated in the House.

He broke from the stance of the Bermuda Defence Bar and said juries should be able to draw an inference from the silence of a defendant during a trial, something that had been left out of PACE.

?At the end of the day you want guilty people to be convicted and innocent people to be set free,? he said.

The utility of expensive court programmes like Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI) needed to be re-examined, he said, and there needed to more statistical reports to gauge the productivity of the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and Police Service.

?They could say crime is down but that could mean reports of crime are down,? he said.

Michael Scott, the Minister of Telecommunications and E-commerce, like Mr. Moniz, drew comparisons between the Brixton riots in the UK which prompted the PACE legislation there, and past examples of civil unrest in Bermuda.

He said: ?The response has to be adequate to meet the needs of our time and it?s a very, very, very great day today in Bermuda as we deal with our PACE bill.?

He listed positive aspects of the legislation, and said it would help to protect both the Police and those they deal with. ?It will serve the this community well when we roll it out for use,? added Mr. Scott.

John Barritt, Opposition Leader and Party Whip, praised the Attorney General for bringing the legislation forward, and acknowledged that PACE had been a long time coming and had not come to fruition under the previous UBP Government. However, he said that the debate on the lengthy Bill, which has more than 100 clauses, showed up the ?hopelessly inadequate and antiquated? system in the House. He said that even lawyers such as himself had difficulty in understanding the wording of the bill, and called for a legislative committee to be formed so that the matter could be discussed with input and explanation from key stakeholders such as the Police, Attorney General and Department of Public Prosecutions who cannot participate in the Parliamentary debate.

Cole Simons, Shadow Minister of the Environment, said there ought to be a community education campaign to inform people of their rights under PACE.

He added that the legislation should address the issue of how the Police deal with officers who are themselves suspected of having committed a criminal offence.

Mr. Simons also asked what is being done about information from DNA sampling and asked if DNA details of suspects is being kept on a national database and what happens when an accused person is found innocent? Is that person?s DNA profiling removed from the database?

There needs to be a system in place that allows innocent people to have their DNA information taken off the database so that they have a clean record. And he asked that Police entrapment tactics to catch suspects be kept to a minimum.

?You cannot use undue circumstances that would encourage a man to do what he would not do in normal circumstances,? said Mr. Simons.

From the Government benches Ashfield DeVent said it was an important issue to modernise a ?colonial police force?. He said: ?There was a time when I went up to the Police club and there were separate groups, British officers were in one part of the club, the few Bermudians were in another part and West Indians were in another part.

?I think PACE will be a watershed.?

And picking up on an earlier reference to a policing in Bermuda having been at one point reminiscent of the ?wild, wild west? he said: ?I have seen evidence of Policemen who have a cowboy mentality. And then we talk about people silent and wanting to remain silent in many cases.

?I have seen and had dealings with Police officers that I too would not have spoken to because of their approach and the individual should have the right to say ?I don?t want to say anything to you, I don?t like how you?ve treated me and what I say might be taken wrong and you might get a little more ?wild, wild west? on me when I?m behind those doors in that Police station?.

?It is about being able to trust the Police. A lot of people do not trust the Police and that goes back to that Colonial Police force and it has to come down in some way to race.?

Mr. DeVent said the Bill would change the way Police, Magistrates and the judiciary think and deal with issues, adding: ?I think it?s a great start. It?s a document that is a living document.?

Home Affairs Minister Randy Horton concluding the session said: ?There was a question about whether the Police were going to be able to step up to the wicket in regard to bringing this legislation forward and get the job done. We do have in place in our funding for a PACE implementation manager. As the Police become more and more informed, more of this legislation will be brought into play.?

He said the question of how a DNA database would operate was addressed in this year?s Throne Speech. The Bill passed its third reading in the House at 5.45 p.m and will now go to the Senate.