A LANDMARK STUDY of the cost of crime and violence in the Caribbean and Latin America has reached a disturbing conclusion: Barbados and some of its neighbours are short-changing their justice systems.
“Evidence suggests that the court systems account for the smallest amounts of spending in national budgets in the [Caribbean] sub-region and that the lack of administrative capacity is a significant bottleneck to processing cases,” was the way the experts put it.
That may explain why our court system is delaying the delivery of justice to people who are in prison on remand, awaiting their day in court, or who are unable to get final adjudication of civil cases, many of which have been on the court dockets for years.
The bottom line is that we are not spending enough to keep the wheels of our courts moving efficiently.
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) couldn’t have chosen a better time to send that key message to Barbados. Parliament is debating our annual Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure this week and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle should remind the Attorney General Adriel Brathwaite and Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler that they have a responsibility to ensure that our judicial institutions have the resources – financial, human and otherwise – to get the job done without undue delay. All the reason why there is need for debate on the justice system.
The Attorney General, who is also Minister of Home Affairs, and the Minister of Finance should remember the words of William E. Gladstone, a 19th century British prime minister, and Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, American civil rights advocate, who both warned at different times that “justice delayed is justice denied”.
For a country which prides itself on having an evenly balanced scale of justice, we should put the running of our courts, the functioning of the police and the administration of our prison system higher on our list of national priorities.
Admittedly, Government’s financial plight makes choices more difficult than they otherwise should be. But the Caribbean Court of Justice, our highest legal tribunal, has regularly complained about the time it takes for Barbadians to get their day in court. That’s untenable.
The IDB experts pointed out that Barbados suffers from having the highest cost of prison administration in the Caribbean and Latin America when measured as a percentage of the gross domestic product.
We should find out why that is so. After all, according to prison data, our penitentiary isn’t even overcrowded. When it came to the police, we have one of the highest ratios of cops to the population in the Caribbean. The big question here is whether we are getting value for money.
Let’s hope our lawmakers have some answers and that the Attorney General, in particular, paints a picture of his vision for our judicial system.