Country’s murder toll worries Chief Justice - Trinidad Guardian Trinidad and Tobago Guardian Online

Sunday, January 12, 2025

Country’s murder toll worries Chief Justice

by

Akash Samaroo
463 days ago
20231007
Chief Justice Ivor Archie inspects the Honour Guard at the opening of the new Law Term outside NAPA, Frederick Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

Chief Justice Ivor Archie inspects the Honour Guard at the opening of the new Law Term outside NAPA, Frederick Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

KERWIN PIERRE

Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie is lament­ing the tra­jec­to­ry of this coun­try’s mur­der rate for 2023.

Dur­ing his ad­dress at the open­ing of the 2023-2024 Law Term at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, crime was the first among the ma­jor is­sues Ivor Archie men­tioned.

“When we last con­vened in 2019, the mur­der toll was 520. This year, like 2022, we are on course to sur­pass 600. Un­der­stand­ably, there is much anx­i­ety and, in that at­mos­phere, pub­lic calls for more ac­count­abil­i­ty are not mis­placed,” Archie said.

Lat­er, in his ad­dress, the Chief Jus­tice al­so said court da­ta shows a wor­ry­ing trend con­cern­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. He said trained staff to help with the pros­e­cu­tion side is sore­ly need­ed.

“There has been a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in fil­ings since the open­ing of the Fam­i­ly Court in Princes Town in Ju­ly 2021. Where­as pre­vi­ous fil­ings were in the range of 5,500 or so per year, in 2022/23 we had 9,051 new fil­ings, of which 3,173 were do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, 2,992 were di­vorces and 1766 were main­te­nance.

“Clear­ly, we have a so­cial prob­lem that needs at­tend­ing to. We man­aged 7,446 de­ter­mi­na­tions. While this is 6 per cent more than 2021/22 and 24 per cent more than the 10-year av­er­age, im­por­tant­ly for fam­i­ly mat­ters, on­ly 35 per cent, 30 per cent and 57 per cent of mat­ters in Port-of-Spain, To­ba­go and Princes Town re­spec­tive­ly, were less than six months old at the time of de­ter­mi­na­tion.

“We are not meet­ing our tar­gets, es­pe­cial­ly for do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, which may be life or death, and that is a hu­man re­source is­sue. We need more ap­pro­pri­ate­ly trained staff,” Archie said.

The CJ al­so spoke about crimes af­fect­ing chil­dren and re­vealed that a meet­ing will take place to dis­cuss how sur­vivors of traf­fick­ing and sex­u­al of­fences are to be man­aged.

Us­ing court da­ta, Archie said, “De­spite a 5% de­crease in fil­ings from 677 to 646, de­ter­mi­na­tions have fall­en 15% from 734 to 625. This is al­so a re­source is­sue. This ju­ris­dic­tion is al­so one where speed is more crit­i­cal. Forty-one per cent of the mat­ters de­ter­mined were less than one year old at the time. It must be not­ed, though, that these mat­ters stay with the court for some time as the court is re­quired to mon­i­tor the chil­dren who have come through the court’s sys­tem.”

He said the Ju­di­cia­ry will al­so work on how it treats with young vic­tims of hu­man traf­fick­ing.
“There has been much dis­cus­sion late­ly about chil­dren who are the vic­tims of traf­fick­ing and not be­ing brought be­fore the court as re­quired by law. The Ju­di­cia­ry will soon be invit­ing the rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit, Im­mi­gra­tion and oth­er units of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Ed­u­ca­tion and Child and Gen­der Af­fairs, to dis­cuss mul­ti agency pro­to­cols for man­ag­ing chil­dren who are the sub­jects of traf­fick­ing and sex­u­al of­fences,” Archie said.

Stay­ing on the is­sue of crime, Archie an­nounced the es­tab­lish­ment of Vir­tu­al Ac­cess Cen­tres where wit­ness­es and lit­i­gants can at­tend court clos­er to home, with the as­sis­tance of mar­shals to en­sure the in­tegri­ty of pro­ceed­ings.
He al­so spoke about the Se­cur­ing Ac­cess Fair­ness and Ef­fi­cien­cy (SAFE) project, which he de­scribed as a re­gion­al ini­tia­tive aimed at en­sur­ing the ef­fec­tive­ness and ef­fi­cien­cy of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sec­tor, through the de­vel­op­ment of re­sources to as­sist Caribbean ju­di­cia­ries in serv­ing the grow­ing num­ber of Lit­i­gants in Per­son (LIPs) more ef­fec­tive­ly.

“In this Ju­di­cia­ry, the SAFE Project will fo­cus on in­ter­ac­tions with all Lit­i­gants in Per­son from an in­sti­tu­tion­al per­spec­tive, not just those in­volved in crim­i­nal mat­ters.

“The project will de­liv­er da­ta gath­ered on stake­hold­er ex­pe­ri­ences and needs with­in the jus­tice sys­tem, tech­no­log­i­cal so­lu­tions, train­ing re­sources and print and elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools for lit­i­gants in per­son, court cus­tomers and court staff,” Archie ex­plained. (See CJ’s speech on page 11)


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