Shadow Attorney-General Michael Scott yesterday commended the Bermuda Government for its progressive justice initiatives but warned they must be very careful of recidivism.

Trevor Moniz, the Attorney-General, celebrated the positive advances in therapeutic jurisprudence programmes within the legal system and victim support provided by the Witness Care Unit.

Mr Scott said that while the authorities had been doing an excellent job at diagnosing a problem driven largely by the presence of drugs, he said the issue began in the 1970s when “large quantities of class A drugs began to be dumped in this community”.

“It is a storybook that has been replicated in many jurisdictions across the world with always the same outcomes,” he said.

He described it as an “attack on the minds of young people”, leading to depression and a loss of jobs and “the policy of policing that interdicts charges makes career choices increasingly impossible for this cohort”.

He said that revenue relied too heavily on a “Magistrate Court glut” and efforts to reduce recidivism and drug treatment and mental health courts were all consequences of the problems we face as a result of this “rotating door”.

“Would that we could focus on breaking the system of why and how drugs get into the country,” he asked.