BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – A three-day conference discussing criminal justice reform in the Caribbean gets underway in Barbados on October 18 amid concerns that the criminal justice system is broken and not working.
“People recognize we are in a crisis. We do not want it to be a talk shop. We want to generate concrete recommendations in addressing the issue,” said Justice Winston Anderson, a judge with the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) and who is also the chairman of the CCJ’s Academy for Law (CAL).
The CAL is staging its seventh biennial conference here under the theme “Criminal Justice Reform in the Caribbean – Achieving a Modern Criminal Justice System,” with at least 200 delegates from throughout the Caribbean and the broader region in attendance.
According to CAL, the three-day event intends to “facilitate dynamic discussions and generate practical recommendations that will effect meaningful change in the criminal justice systems of the region.”
The topics for discussion include the importance of pre-trial proceedings, plea bargaining, crime and economic development, civil asset forfeiture, victims’ rights, anti-gang legislation, modern evidence-gathering techniques, judge-alone trials, and sentencing, among others.
The Jamaican-born Justice Anderson acknowledges the criminal justice system is broken from both the accused and the prosecution’s perspectives. He refers to the lengthy delays in persons being brought to trial and, in many instances, having to remain on remand, effectively “being in prison.”
He has welcomed the decision of countries in the Caribbean, including those, not full members of the CCJ, to adopt the CCJ ruling that in cases where persons are convicted, the period on remand be subtracted from the overall jail term.
“We have come to normalize the intolerable,” he told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC), noting that the judiciary is also part of the society and affected by crime.
“There is an alarming pandemic of serious crimes in the region. In accepting this state of affairs, we have normalized the intolerable and stunted economic development,” said Justice Anderson, warning that if the Caribbean is to achieve sustainable economic and social development truly, then the issue of crime and criminality in the region cannot be tolerated and must be addressed.
“This can only be done using a multi-pronged approach, one such approach being the reform of the criminal justice system,” he added.
The CCJ Academy for Law says its mandate is to provide informative and innovative perspectives on the rules and the roles of law and provide a platform for examining court administration and encouraging best practices in the judicial administration of justice.
Among its objectives is to instigate and encourage debate on the role and content of the discipline of Comparative Law, bearing particularly in mind that the major traditions of the common law and civil law systems are represented in the member states of CARICOM over which the CCJ exercises appellate and original jurisdiction.
It is also intended to deliver programs to enhance practical learning in court administration, decrease backlogs in case determinations, and enhance access to justice in the judiciaries of the region.
The Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) are co-sponsors of the conference that will be addressed by the Barbados Attorney General, Dale Marshall, S.C and declared open by the CCJ President, Justice Adrian Saunders.
A Caribbean Strategy for Criminal Justice Reform by Sirah Abraham of the US-UK Criminal Justice Reform Project and the Scottish Approach to pre-trial proceedings, enforcing time limits and active case management by Lord Beckett of the Supreme Courts of Scotland will be among the presentations on the opening day.
Jamaica’s Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) will make a presentation on “Plea-bargaining: A Game Changer,? also on the first day of the conference that ends with a town hall meeting on the theme “Getting a Grip on Crime: Public Perceptions and Practical Solutions.”
St. Lucia’s Prime Minister Phillip J. Pierre, who is the chair of the Council for National Security and Law Enforcement (CONSOLE), will lead off the events on the second day on the topic “CARICOM National Security that will be followed by a plenary session on “Victims Rights” with the panelists being Justice Ronnie Boodoosingh, a Court of Appeal judge in Trinidad and Tobago, Dr. Chile Eboe-Osuji, the former president of the International Criminal Court (ICJ) Sejilla Mc Dowall, the DPP of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, her Guyanese counterpart Mrs. Shalimar Ali-Hack S.C. and Sirah Abraham, US – UK Criminal Justice Reform Project.
Justice Anderson told CMC that at the end of the three-day event, recommendations will be submitted to the various stakeholders in the Caribbean, including governments.
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