Chief Justice Leslie Haynes says better facilities and accurate data are required if the magistrates’ courts are to clear the backlog of cases.
He maintains that in order to address the case pile-up, magistrates and legal assistants will need more resources.
“In order to clear a backlog, you must first have capacity to go forward. Once you have capacity and you are dealing with the present and the future in such a way that there is no backlog created, you then have an opportunity to investigate the backlog and deal with it. But if we go to deal with a backlog without creating capacity going forward, we will always be in a backlog,” Haynes told the DAILY NATION at this week’s official launch of the Judicial Information Management System (JIMS) at the District ‘D’ Magistrates’ Court in Cane Garden, St Thomas.
He noted that several magistrates had only one legal assistant and their limitations were often brought to light if that assistant was unavailable.
“There is a certain feeling that magistrates should work eight hours a day – that is, to be on the Bench eight hours a day – but in order to work eight hours a day, there must be facilities and resources available to be able to work eight hours a day.
“What we do know is that magistrates can’t work eight hours a day because they do not have the technological assistance to help them work eight hours a day,” the Chief Justice said.
He added that while some justice systems across the region have tried increasing the number of judges as a way to address the issue, the problems will remain without an additional push for data-driven methods and analysis of the judicial process.
“The road to fixing everything begins with statistics and processes, and analysing whether which step in the process creates a backlog or not. If the whole system is inefficient, you can get a hundred judges but the bottleneck will still be there. You can create a hundred judges and the cases will never reach them. So, the road to that begins with getting that data,” Haynes added.
JIMS, set to be put in practice from April 25, is expected to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of magistrates and court staff, improving the management of cases and monitoring them in real time.
While he is optimistic about the new system, the Chief Justice cautioned that it would take some time to be effective.
