Court may sit longer hours – Attorney General

With roughly 22,000 cases filed in the Magistrates’ Court in Barbados annually, Attorney General Dale Marshall believes the introduction of night court is still a possibility.

However, he promised that before judges are put on a shift system, Government would ensure better use of existing facilities.

Marshall said he believed Government was able to do more work in the Supreme Court building to be able to have all courts functioning in the day time.

“We recognize that with bringing in new judges we simply did not have adequate court space, but we have looked at the flow of traffic, our efficient and better use of the existing facility, and we believe that we will be able to put in a few more courts at a minimum cost to be able to fully utilize the facility,” he explained.

At the same time, he said: “We are going to have to look seriously though at the question of evening courts in relation to the magistracy.

“We have a small number of magistrates but every year about 22,000 cases get filed in our magistrates’ court. So multiply that by about two years, three years or four years, and the overwhelming majority would be traffic matters.

“So we have to come up with some new responses to be able to allow our magistrates’ courts to function more efficiently and I believe that now that we have put things in place to begin to solve those problems for the High Courts we are now going to turn our attention to the magistrates’ court and in that context we really may have to swell the ranks of our magistracy by doing what is done in other places, additional magistrates who will work another shift,” he explained.

The promise of evening court sittings in Barbados was made earlier this year, when Marshall pointed out that it was necessary in order to have justice delivered more efficiently and affordably.

At the time, Marshall said it was likely that matters heard in the evening would be civil since “criminal matters done in the assizes would not be amendable to that kind of extension”.

He had also noted that it would first be discussed with the tripartite Social Partnership, which include labour unions, Government and the private sector.