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Full police disclosure, bail court help curtail lengthy trials

Jan 04, 2018 News

  • nvestigators complete 90% of file before it reaches court

Guyana’s judiciary continues to benefit from initiatives established under the Justice Education Society (JES).
The JES is a Canadian-funded project aimed at providing support to the local judiciary towards the modernization and efficiency of the system.
Under the project, a number of mechanisms are developed to help reduce case backlog and length of trials.
As a matter of priority, the judicial officers have combined their efforts at introducing initiatives to reduce the length of proceedings (trials) at the level of the Magistrates’ Court.
The initiative included full disclosures at the summary level and the establishment of a pilot bail court for Magistrate Court matters.
A report compiled by JES outlined that until December 2016, prosecutors were not obligated to disclose all relevant evidence collected by the police against the accused. As a result, some files were incomplete and cases were stalled when they reached the Magistrates’ Courts. This resulted in adjournments by both prosecutors and defence when new evidence was added during the trial, which in turn increased the length of trial.
Following a JES seminar, members of theGuyana Police Force, the Chief Magistrate and the Court Superintendant worked to develop Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) to ensure that investigators completed all the files before they could be heard in Court.
According to the report, positive changes were almost immediate within the first two weeks. The then Divisional Commander Clifton Hicken reported that 16 out of 18 files on summary cases were complete compared to the 50% rate prior. Additionally, 90 % of the matters were complete. He noted that “disclosure at the Summary level has been working for us”.
“We have been getting good feedback from the court, so it’s working,” he added.
In recent years, calls for the judiciary to be more proactive in carrying out its duties have increased. These calls have gained more urgency in the wake of the fire that gutted most of the Camp Street prison. It was only last year that another fire had claimed the lives of 17 inmates. Amidst the fatalities were prisoners who were anguishing in prison for ten years pending trial at the Magistrate Court Level.
According to the report of a Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the 2016 fire, the combination of being overcrowded, uncomfortable, and an unhygienic confinement created ideal conditions for epidemics and for gangs to prosper and propagate discontent.
Moreover, the COI found that reducing numbers in prison to manageable levels is the single most important priority for establishing safe, humane and purposeful prisons.
It was further noted that repeat offenders have increased by over 100 per cent, “indicating not only a waste of taxpayers’ dollars, but also the need for a more comprehensive and structured partnership within the wider justice system.”
But it was only after the 2017 fire that the judiciary took concerted steps to grant pre-trial liberty to remand inmates whose bail had previously been curtailed for various reasons.
The idea behind the pilot bail court, was that reducing interruption in the trial would enable the more effective use of court time and reduce the backlogs of trial waiting to be heard.
From an infrastructure perspective, some steps have been taken to address some of the most prevalent complaints against the judiciary. Those include the construction of a night court and a court dealing specifically with sexual violence cases.

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