The po­lice will now be re­quired to pro­vide more de­tailed in­for­ma­tion on ac­cused per­sons’ crim­i­nal records when they ap­ply for bail.

High Court Judge Trevor Jones in­tro­duced the re­quire­ment as he strong­ly crit­i­cised the cur­rent pro­ce­dure un­der which cit­i­zens’ crim­i­nal records are up­dat­ed.

Jus­tice Jones is­sued the crit­i­cism ear­li­er this week as he ruled on a bail ap­pli­ca­tion brought by Kent Thomas, of Gas­par­il­lo, af­ter he was charged with kid­nap­ping and oth­er of­fences in 2022.

Re­spond­ing to Thomas’ ap­pli­ca­tion in Sep­tem­ber last year, pros­e­cu­tors ob­ject­ed to bail as they pre­sent­ed his crim­i­nal record of pend­ing cas­es and con­vic­tions pre­pared by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) Crim­i­nal Records Of­fice (CRO).

While the record stat­ed that Thomas had nine cas­es that were de­ter­mined in his favour, one con­vic­tion, and 15 pend­ing mat­ters, his lawyer Ives Jacques Nichol­son claimed that eight of the pend­ing mat­ters were al­so dis­missed.

Jus­tice Jones was called up­on to de­ter­mine how to treat the con­test­ed in­for­ma­tion and to en­sure that the court was pro­vid­ed with ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion.

Not­ing that ac­cused peo­ple would usu­al­ly be re­quired to pro­vide court ex­tracts to but­tress their claims, Jones sug­gest­ed that such ac­tion was in­ap­pro­pri­ate as he rec­om­mend­ed its dis­con­tin­u­ance.

“If ap­pli­cants are ef­fec­tive­ly be­ing com­pelled to fur­nish ev­i­dence of their in­no­cence as a pre­req­ui­site for oth­er le­gal or ad­min­is­tra­tive ac­tions, this could be viewed as an un­fair im­po­si­tion, po­ten­tial­ly vi­o­lat­ing the prin­ci­ples of jus­tice,” Jus­tice Jones said.

In analysing the cur­rent record pro­ce­dure, Jus­tice Jones not­ed that records, which are en­tered when a per­son is charged, are on­ly up­dat­ed when the CRO is pro­vid­ed in­for­ma­tion at the end of a case by pros­e­cu­tors and po­lice of­fi­cers, who laid the charges.

“In many in­stances, the ac­cu­ra­cy of records main­tained by the po­lice de­pends sig­nif­i­cant­ly on the dili­gence of po­lice of­fi­cers in pro­vid­ing time­ly and pre­cise in­for­ma­tion to the CRO, which acts as a da­ta col­lec­tion agency af­ter the pro­ce­dure for ‘book­ing’ an ac­cused per­son is fi­nalised,” he said.

“What is even more trou­bling is the ap­par­ent ab­sence of an au­dit­ing mech­a­nism, which is es­sen­tial for main­tain­ing trust in the sys­tem, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the po­ten­tial for hu­man er­ror,” he added.

Jus­tice Jones point­ed out that the CRO had a du­ty to pro­vide ac­cu­rate records.

“The Court recog­nis­es that in­ac­cu­ra­cies in records from the CRO are a re­cur­ring is­sue, cre­at­ing dilem­mas such as hav­ing to dis­re­gard por­tions of the record or post­pon­ing bail de­ci­sions un­til the in­for­ma­tion is ver­i­fied,” he said.

Stat­ing that the cur­rent sys­tem is un­re­li­able and un­der­mines the court’s trust in it, Jus­tice Jones ex­pressed hope that his judg­ment would in­spire re­form.

“One in­tent be­hind this judg­ment is to en­cour­age the TTPS to ap­proach the Court’s de­ci­sion with an open mind, em­brac­ing con­struc­tive crit­i­cism for the bet­ter­ment of their process­es,” he said.

As part of his judg­ment, he or­dered the CRO to pro­vide a de­tailed ac­count of the checks that are made when­ev­er they are called up­on to do so for a bail ap­pli­ca­tion.

He or­dered that his de­ci­sion be sent to the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er so that it could be shared with the CRO.

“It is un­for­tu­nate that a court or­der is nec­es­sary to rec­ti­fy the sit­u­a­tion, but courts play a cru­cial role in the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers, serv­ing as a check and bal­ance to en­sure that oth­er branch­es of gov­ern­ment ex­er­cise their pow­ers re­spon­si­bly, es­pe­cial­ly when those pow­ers di­rect­ly im­pact fun­da­men­tal con­sti­tu­tion­al rights,” he said.

The Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions was rep­re­sent­ed by As­trea Stoute.