A COMPREHENSIVE reform of the justice system is long overdue. The announcement out of a Cabinet retreat last week that such reform will now be undertaken is obviously prompted by the welter of criticisms in the wake of the Kraal murder trial.
Our own reporting and editorial commentary in late December last year, cited more mundane bases for reform. We cited the long delays, particularly in civil matters which have taken years to be tried in the Supreme Court. Two extreme examples involved a 69-year-old farmer whose civil suit for false imprisonment filed in 1998 has been set for trial in year 2008; and there was a negligence suit against the Jamaica Public Service Company, which took six years before it was tried and settled.
Against that background, the need for urgent reform of the justice system rests not so much on the controversy over the jury verdict in the Kraal case, but on the time it takes for such matters and others less serious to be brought to trial.
As we reported in late December, court delays may have stemmed from the Civil Procedure Rules of 2002, which came into effect in 2003. These rules required that all civil cases go to a case management
conference and then pre-trial reviews which are presided over by judges.
The backlog of cases which has developed since then has led to frustration on the part of lawyers and their clients. Clearly, the number of judges has to be increased, as well as the courtroom space to accommodate them.
The Government announcement says reform of the system will be based on three pillars: access, quality and speed. By access, we interpret to mean availability to all who have grievances to settle; quality suggests the competence of the legal machinery from the bench to the Bar - the whole paraphernalia of prosecution, defence, and litigation in matters civil and criminal. The efficient operation of the system under those two pillars is crucial to the speed. And as the old aphorism says, justice delayed is justice denied.
Reform is also crucial to the level of crime. The alarming murder rate, including mob killings, may be attributable to a variety of social and domestic causes, among them a loss of faith or patience in the system of justice. Parliament must move with urgency on the reform process, among other things, to reverse the reliance on reprisals so often cited in the catalogue of current crime.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
