(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) More than seventy of the Region’s judges and other representatives from the judiciary system in the Caribbean will participate in a high-level four-day training conference set for Montego Bay, Jamaica on February 2-5, 2011.

The training intervention, titled Establishing and Consolidating Drug Treatment Courts in the Caribbean: a Team Effort, is designed to assist the Caribbean in establishing and strengthening Drug Treatment Courts (DTCs). It forms part of a broader initiative – the Caribbean Drug Treatment Court Project - to help curb substance abuse and its social consequences in the Caribbean, by developing and implementing policies that promote alternatives to incarceration for drug dependent offenders.

This Caribbean Drug Treatment Court (DTC) project is a collaborative effort coordinated by the Organization of the American States (OAS), through the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD) of the Secretariat for Multidimensional Security, and funded by the Government of Canada.

The Caribbean Community, aided by the European Union through the 9th European Development Fund, is giving strong support to this project which was designed on the premise that “policies which help prevent crime, violence and drugs are just as vital to community well-being as law enforcement actions.”

One of the alternative practices that are being advocated, under the project is the introduction of judicially supervised treatment for some types of drug dependent offenders. Baseline research has indicated that over the past twenty years, this practice has proved to be effective in not only helping many countries to reduce crime and high incidence of relapse into drug use, but has also served to curtail the economic costs of incarceration.

The workshop in Jamaica is therefore one of the first activities under the DTC project. It brings together judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, treatment providers, and probation officers from four parishes of Jamaica - Kingston, St. James, St. Ann, and St. Catherine - who will be trained as future Drug Treatment Court teams. Two Drug Treatment Court teams from Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago will also be participating in the training.

The facilitators for this high-level conference include DTC experts from Canada, who will be supported by experts from the Ministry of Justice, Jamaica (through the Office of the Chief Justice); the Ministry of Health, Jamaica (through the National Council on Drug Addiction (NCDA)); the Canadian Association of Drug Treatment Courts (CADTC); the International Association of Drug Treatment Courts (IADTC) and the CARICOM Secretariat.

The first day of the conference will serve to establish through a rich plenary session, the relevance and impact of Drug Treatment Courts in the Caribbean. This session will be led by three keynote presenters: Canada’s Justice Paul Bentley, Chair, International Association of Drug Treatment Courts (IADTC); Justice Kofi Barnes, Chair, Canadian Association of Drug Treatment Court Professionals (CADTC) and Jamaica’s Justice Glen Brown, High Court Judge and one of the founders of the Drug Treatment Courts in Jamaica.

Among the issues that will occupy the ensuing three days are the process of addiction, which includes how people change and the motivational strategies that can be employed in the behaviour change process; the recovery process; the 13 principles necessary for a successful Drug Treatment Court; treatment issues in DTCs, ethical considerations in Drug Treatment Courts and factors to consider in setting up DTCs.

In addition to sharing best practices from a number of countries, participants will use the CARICOM Universal Standards of Care Manual for Treatment and Rehabilitation of Substance Abuse as a guide for setting standards of care for DTCs. The Manual was developed in collaboration with CICAD.

Participants will be engaged in several team-based activities, role play and simulation exercises at the conference.

CONTACT: piu@caricom.org