Derek Achong

The in­abil­i­ty of the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) to man­age its own fi­nances is one of the rea­sons cit­ed for de­lays in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

Ad­dress­ing a meet­ing of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Fi­nance and Le­gal Af­fairs in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, DPP Roger Gas­pard, SC, said that his de­part­ment's lack of fi­nan­cial au­ton­o­my af­fects its abil­i­ty to prop­er­ly staff its de­part­ment and pro­vide train­ing to staff.

Asked by com­mit­tee mem­bers Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Michael Cop­pin and San Fer­nan­do East MP Ran­dall Mitchell if his of­fice could re­cruit new­ly grad­u­at­ed lawyers to fill the gaps whilst the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (JLSC) ad­dressed a long-term staffing so­lu­tion, Gas­pard said no.

"The DPP's Of­fice does not have its own bud­get and is hav­ing prob­lems ac­quir­ing pho­to­copiers, pa­per and ink. In those cir­cum­stances and hav­ing the need to pri­ori­tise...while in an ide­al world we might have out­reach pro­grammes, at the mo­ment that is not with­in our ca­pac­i­ty," Gas­pard said.

Gas­pard al­so claimed that the staff short­age was af­fect­ing his of­fice's abil­i­ty to train pros­e­cu­tors and have them as­signed to spe­cialised ar­eas of crim­i­nal law, both of which he said are need­ed to ad­dress the back­log of crim­i­nal cas­es be­fore the courts.

"We have to in­crease staff and on­ly then we would be af­ford­ed the lux­u­ry and com­fort of plac­ing at­tor­neys in spe­cialised ar­eas. As it is now every­body has to do every­thing," Gas­pard said.

Re­spond­ing to Gas­pard's com­plaints, per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Of­fice of the AG, In­grid Seer­at­tan, said that her min­istry was in the process of hir­ing 15 state at­tor­neys to sup­ple­ment the DPP's staff, but she not­ed that ad­di­tion­al pros­e­cu­tors could not be hired un­til new of­fices are pro­vid­ed to house them.

Seer­at­tan not­ed that the DPP's new To­ba­go of­fice is ex­pect­ed to open lat­er this year, but that the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion was yet to ap­prove build­ings in Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do that were pro­posed al­most two years ago.

"We are work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly but it is im­pos­si­ble to say be­cause it is not in our hands," Seer­at­tan said when asked by chair­man of the com­mit­tee In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Sophia Chote for a time­line for com­ple­tion of the projects.

In ad­di­tion to is­sues with staff and fi­nanc­ing, Gas­pard al­so claimed that de­lays were caused be­cause of the small pool of crim­i­nal de­fence at­tor­neys avail­able to ac­cused peo­ple.

"Per­sons seek rep­re­sen­ta­tion from a small pool of at­tor­neys and once these at­tor­neys are caught up in oth­er tri­als you find that those mat­ters are al­most al­ways con­tin­u­ous­ly ad­journed," Gas­pard said.