Dennie Quill, Contributor

The greatest beneficiaries of the recent rains that battered St. Mary appear to be the criminals of the parish. The news from officials there is that several dangerous criminals may walk free because case records and files being kept at the Port Maria Police Station have suffered grave water damage.

The implications are vast, for failure to secure court documents to facilitate a trial, thereby establishing a suspect's guilt or innocence, places public safety at risk.

Although there were no details of what was missing, one imagines that in addition to case evidence, the police station would have been storing other evidence, such as property recovered or property held for safekeeping.

Causing major concern

I suspect that this situation is causing major concern to the police and officers of the court, because already there is a general difficulty in gathering evidence to bring cases to trial, and now that effort has been thwarted by an inefficient system which does not appear to have contingencies in place. I wish the police and the DPP good luck in trying to salvage evidence and/or reconstruct these cases in an attempt to ameliorate the situation.

Ok, so that happened in St. Mary? What about other police stations and courts of the country? Are they also vulnerable? Could a fire at the Supreme Court in Kingston result in the destruction of critical court documents and files? There are volumes of records in this building. There are bulging file rooms and records are stacked from floor to ceiling in sections of the Supreme Court. What will happen ten years from now? Will the Supreme Court have to rent outside space to store its documents? The responsibility for the storage and retention of these important records is not to be taken lightly.

What happened in St. Mary should prompt an islandwide review of the protocols governing the storage and security of documents and files in all police stations and courts. There may be urgent need for updating these protocols, in order to maintain the integrity of the records kept therein, in the event of a crisis.

Integrity of the judicial process

People in authority may argue that a country such as ours, with limited resources to deal with competing priorities, cannot be blamed for putting the security of court documents on the back burner. But if we are serious about maintaining the integrity of the judicial process we cannot ignore these challenges.

Innovations in technology in the past decades have made court records available for electronic filing. Traditionally, our courts have used paper-based filing systems. If electronic filing is not being done, surely the time has come to look at the benefits of converting from paper storage to digital record-keeping, at least at the level of the Supreme Court. There are many advantages in employing this system, not least of which are the efficiencies gained, the elimination of misfiling, the protection of documents, the need for less manpower and quicker retrieval of documents. Safety and security are the watchwords of the 21st century, and we must take heed and be prepared.

Preventative measures

The word 'malaria' is on everybody's tongue these days, and I would urge you all to take your safety in hand. More and more, we are seeing that our Government is good at reacting but is useless at implementing preventative measures. When was the last time you saw a public health inspector walking in your neighbourhood? When Jamaica was declared malaria-free in the 1960s public health inspectors roamed the land making sure that premises were free of all potential mosquito-breeding areas.

We cannot forget also that the vector control programme was dropped in 1986. That was a clear signal to every citizen - you are on your own. Malaria is the health care dilemma of the moment. I have said it before and I am repeating it, another epidemic looms, with the large rat population in New Kingston, and the burgeoning trade in sidewalk cooking and vending - it's only a matter of time.

Dennie Quill is a veteran journalist who may be reached at denniequill@hotmail.com