Caribbean attorneys general meet to tackle court backlogs

In an effort to modernise the regional judicial system and significantly reduce mountainous backlogs in court, the attorneys general of several Caribbean countries met here on Thursday to work together to find effective solutions.

Barbados convened the first-ever Attorneys General Roundtable at the UN House in Marine Gardens, Hastings, facilitated by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) under the PACE Justice Project.

Stephanie Zabel, deputy resident representative of UNDP for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, underscored the pivotal role of attorneys general in shaping legislative frameworks and ensuring responsive, efficient, and accessible justice systems. 

“This roundtable provides a unique platform for sharing best practices, discussing common challenges, and collaboratively exploring solutions,” Zabel noted, linking the forum’s agenda to the principles outlined in the Needham’s Point Declaration, which was adopted in October 2023 in Barbados. The Needham’s Point Declaration emphasises criminal justice reform through coordinated legislative efforts, judicial process modernisation, and enhanced social support systems.

Attorney General Dale Marshall told the meeting the challenges the national and regional justice system were experiencing needed to be addressed as a matter of priority, pointing out that the system’s inadequacies could infringe on citizens’ fundamental rights.

“The criminal justice destination is one that requires us to deal effectively with the backlog in our system. And I think we begin at the outset by recognising that this is not a Caribbean problem, that it is a global problem,” he said. “This is an especially burning issue for me because we have murder cases that are untried that date back to 2012. A common feature now of our judicial system is that all of these individuals, all of these accused, not just in murder law, but just running the entire gamut of criminal cases, have been seeking relief under constitutional provisions. And you can imagine how galling it must be for citizens. As AGs, we all accept that people have their fundamental rights and our job is to protect those rights, accused people have rights too.

“But my constituent living in St Joseph and yours will have a hard time coming to grips with the fact that a person is charged with one murder, sometimes two murders, or multiple firearm offences, because of a delay in a system that they have no control over, the case potentially gets stayed permanently. And on top of that, the individual seeks to get damages. So the State is now taking taxpayers’ money to compensate a person for delaying a trial . . . Our systems have not been efficient and have not been effective.”

Acknowledging the various programmes that have been established over the past three to four years to improve the justice system, Marshall said he was pleased some progress was being made to improve the system.

“If our criminal justice system is not seen as being effective and efficient, it will erode the confidence of the public. And if you erode the confidence of the public, then we have an even bigger problem. The rule of law will be challenged,” he added.

Malgorzata Wazaluska, the European Union Ambassador to the Eastern Caribbean, CARICOM, and CARIFORUM, noted that a fair, independent, and efficient justice system fosters social stability, economic confidence, and public trust in institutions.

She added that the discussions at the roundtable will focus on critical issues such as judge-alone trials, plea negotiations, regional legal cooperation, and constitutional reform.

“These are not merely technical legal issues but matters that impact people’s lives and their trust in the legal system,” Wazaluska said.

The Attorneys General Roundtable is a two-day event that involved Dominica’s Levi Peter; Guyana’s Mohabir Anil Nandall; Leslie Mondesir of  Saint Lucia; Reginald Armour, Trinidad and Tobago; St Kitts and Nevis’s Garth Wilkin and the president of the Turks and Caicos Islands Court of Appeal Justice Alice York Suhan. 

(SZB)