DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The re-es­tab­lish­ment of the Min­istry of Jus­tice has been hailed as a nec­es­sary move to ad­dress the coun­try’s chron­ic ju­di­cial back­log and prison over­crowd­ing, ac­cord­ing to crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad.

How­ev­er, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Camille Robin­son-Reg­is is less con­vinced, call­ing it po­lit­i­cal win­dow dress­ing rather than re­al re­form.

She re­called the Min­istry’s trou­bled past un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment be­tween 2010 and 2015. Back then, Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney was fired over the Sec­tion 34 scan­dal. His suc­ces­sor, Christlyn Moore, was lat­er re­as­signed.

Robin­son-Reg­is won­dered whether the Min­istry’s re­vival was more about cre­at­ing posts than fix­ing jus­tice.

“When it was pre­vi­ous­ly es­tab­lished, it was fraught with con­tro­ver­sy and in­ef­fi­cien­cy,” she said. “It was first head­ed by Her­bert Vol­ney, who was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed fol­low­ing the Sec­tion 34 de­ba­cle, a scan­dal that se­vere­ly un­der­mined pub­lic trust in the jus­tice sys­tem.”

Giv­en that his­to­ry, Robin­son-Reg­is is ques­tion­ing the true in­tent be­hind the Min­istry’s re­vival.

“One must ask, is the re­vival of this Min­istry tru­ly about im­prov­ing jus­tice or is it sim­ply a way to en­sure there are enough Min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lios to go around?” she asked. “Good gov­er­nance should be the pri­or­i­ty, not po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy.”

“For the sake of the coun­try, I hope that lessons have been learned and that this is not just about op­tics, but about mean­ing­ful and ac­count­able lead­er­ship,” Robin­son-Reg­is said.

“I hope that they will put Coun­try be­fore Par­ty so that we don’t all go to hell.”

How­ev­er, Dr Seep­er­sad de­scribed the ju­di­cial sys­tem as “acute­ly con­sti­pat­ed,” cit­ing long de­lays in court pro­ceed­ings and the grow­ing pop­u­la­tion of in­di­vid­u­als on re­mand, many of whom have not been con­vict­ed of any crime.

He un­der­scored the im­por­tance of a stand­alone min­istry fo­cused sole­ly on the jus­tice sys­tem, ar­gu­ing that the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al are al­ready ex­ten­sive and dis­tinct from ju­di­cial re­form.

“The re­mit of le­gal af­fairs is not re­al­ly that of jus­tice and the AG, who is sup­posed to be the le­gal ad­vi­sor to the gov­ern­ment, has enough tasks at hand to deal with all the lit­i­ga­tion that comes through the desk of the AG and all the need to ad­vise the gov­ern­ment on prop­er le­gal ac­tion, and the geopo­lit­i­cal as­pect of Trinidad and To­ba­go in the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty,” he said.

“So, for ex­am­ple, ex­hi­bi­tion war­rants and things like that have to pass across the desk of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. To deal with the con­sti­pa­tion with­in the ju­di­cia­ry, you have to look at the ca­pac­i­ty of the present ju­di­cial sys­tem with clients and ma­te­r­i­al, and per­son­nel, in light of the de­mand for jus­tice, based up­on the lev­el of pol­lu­tion in the so­ci­ety.”

The crim­i­nol­o­gist warned that the pro­longed de­ten­tion of legal­ly in­no­cent in­di­vid­u­als is turn­ing re­mand fa­cil­i­ties in­to a “uni­ver­si­ty of crim­i­nal­i­ty,” due to the ex­tend­ed ex­po­sure of low-risk de­tainees to hard­ened crim­i­nals over months and even years.

He not­ed that ad­dress­ing the ju­di­cial back­log re­quires a com­pre­hen­sive look at the sys­tem’s “clients, ma­te­ri­als, and per­son­nel” in light of bud­getary con­straints and ris­ing de­mand for jus­tice.

Dr Seep­er­sad ex­pressed hope that the re­vived min­istry will mod­ernise the ju­di­cia­ry and bring it in line with 21st-cen­tu­ry stan­dards of gov­er­nance and ef­fi­cien­cy.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, for­mer jus­tice min­is­ter Christlyn Moore would on­ly say: “I ea­ger­ly await the roll­out of the new min­istry and the promise it holds to re­shape the land­scape of de­liv­ery in this area to every­day peo­ple.”