GOVERNMENT INTENDS to amend the Bail Act to prevent persons charged with gun offences from obtaining bail within the first 90 days of being arrested. There is also a plan to require mandatory sentencing for specified offences.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding is to make these announcements in Parliament on Tuesday, but he may alter his plans following an open letter from human-rights advocate Yvonne McCalla-Sobers revealing his strategies.

Golding could not be reached for comment last night following McCalla-Sobers' release of the anti-crime initiative.

McCalla-Sobers, convenor of Families Against State Terrorism, said the anti-crime proposals, which would last for at least three years, were draconian. She blasted the Government for the proposed initiative and urged that it pay more attention to the Road Map to a Safe and Secure Jamaica, the anti-crime plan Golding's Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) had crafted while in Opposition.

No safer

"I left your July 18 meeting with a sense of unease after you shared your Govern-ment's proposed crime initiatives with a group of human-rights defenders. It seemed to me that once again, my country's leadership was intent on adopting or reinstituting draconian measures that have made Jamaica no safer (and in reality far less safe) over the past 30 years," Sobers said in the letter.

The prime minister told Parliament on July 15 that he would announce the anti-crime initiative this Tuesday. Golding has said the current crime scourge required "extraordinary measures".

More than 900 Jamaicans have been murdered since January.

One of the controversial proposals which Golding's Cabinet held close to its chest was amending the law to allow detentions for up to 28 days without charge once authorised by a police superintendent or higher officer.

Golding's administration had also intended to announce in Parliament an amendment to the Terrorism Prevention Act.

The human-rights advocate has insisted that "the proposals in this crime initiative relate more to suspension of rights than protection of rights, and more to punishment than prevention".

McCalla-Sobers recommended to Golding that the approach to crime fighting be "more preventive than retributive, tackling causes of crime with a view to winning the confidence and cooperation of the law-abiding".