The Dominican ambassador in Washington, Anibal de Castro, has revealed that President Danilo Medina has asked the United States for support to implement a program to help Dominicans who are deported from the US, after serving prison sentences there, to rejoin Dominican society.
Castro said that Medina discussed the issue with US President Barack Obama at the recent summit for the System of Central American Integration (SICA) held in April in San Jose, Costa Rica.
Castro went on to say that the reality was that the US would continue to deport overseas convicts once they had completed their sentence there, but that it had been agreed that the Dominican Republic would at least have access to their criminal records, relating to their time in the United States.
He said that the Dominican Embassy had created a database in coordination with the Ministry of Interior and Police, which could then share the information with the National Police, the National Investigations Department (DNI) and the National Drug Control Agency (DNCD). He said that by using this database, the DR authorities would be able to find out how long each person had been jailed for, for what reason, and when they arrived in the US.
He added that the Dominican government believed that the increasing number of former convicts deported from the US was a threat to public safety, as many continued their criminal activities on their return, especially in the area of drug dealing.
De Castro said that although they were Dominican-born, most had learned their criminal ways in the United States, and they were exporting this knowledge to the Dominican Republic. He said it would be better if they could enter into a program when they returned in order to prevent reoffending and to reinvent themselves as productive members of society.
www.listindiario.com/la-republica/2013/5/13/276826/Medina-solicita-plan-a-Obama-para-reinsertar-a-deportados