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Judiciary Courting Public Confidence
posted (October 31, 2019)

So, you heard in our story how we describe the theme of this CAJO conference as somewhat controversial. 

Their main area of focus is, "Judicial Integrity - the Pathway to Public Trust". Here in Belize, we've shown you instances of dissatisfaction with the judiciary by litigants who have been forced to wait untold years for judgments.  Also, we've reported on numerous cases where persons accused of murder have remained on remand at the Prison for years, only to get their day in court, where they are acquitted. 

Well, according to the keynote speaker from today's session at CAJO, the research he's conducted suggests that public confidence in the judiciary, all across the Caribbean, is decreasing.  He asserted that surveys, from as far back as 2007, have indicated this decline in public confidence.

Here's a small excerpt from his 50-minute presentation:

Terrence Farrell - Keynote Speaker, CAO Conference
"There are other indicators that we can perhaps look at and these are all coming from sort of global studies. There is the world justice project which looked at rule of law and computes a rule law index for countries around the world and there's a ranking of countries, we have rankings for Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, St. Lucia and St. Vincent. They're scoring the rule of law and there are several components in index and the 3 of those components are relevant I think. One is the question of the absence of corruption in the judiciary and we do well, all of the countries in the region do well. I have put up the United Kingdom in the last column there as a comparator and you'd see that from in terms of the people's perception of the absence of corruption, our countries do well but in respect to the delivery of civil justice and criminal justice, we do not do very well at all in respect of this world justice project rule of law index. That particular survey actually survey people like attorneys in the various countries."

"And finally we can point to the global competitiveness report which surveys business people and the global competitiveness report has again a number of different components including what they call institution pillar and within the institution pillar, there is question about 2 aspects which relate to the question of the judiciary and justice system. Again, for the 2018 report on judicial independence, Jamaica has a score of 4.8, Trinidad & Tobago a score of 4.5 with a global rank for Jamaica of 38 out of 137 and Trinidad & Tobago 47 out of 137 and we can compare that to the United Kingdom in terms of their score and its rank and then in respect to the efficiency of the legal framework in settling disputes, we see that Jamaica has a score of 3.5 with a rank of 72 out of 137 countries and Trinidad & Tobago has a score 3.0 with a rank of 104 out of 137 countries."

"There are results for 2019, the report just came out a couple of weeks ago and that report indicates that our rankings have in fact, our scores have in fact declined. Finally, I want to note that some commentators have claimed that the results of recent referendum in Grenada and Antigua and Barbuda which both rejected accession to the CCJ as the final appellate court for these countries are indicators of a lack of public confidence in the judiciary in the region."

So, how will the judges treat with this information? That's what we asked the head of the Caribbean Association of Judicial Officers and the President of the Caribbean Court of Justice. Here's how that conversation went:

Hon. Justice Adrian Saunders - President, CCJ
"That's an area that is becoming more and more topical because people are becoming more conscious not only their rights but of the way they are treated by judicial officers and so one of the things we stress at our conferences, is not just about your knowledge of the law but how you deal with people, how you deal with vulnerable sections of the community, how you deal with marginalized people and building ways to get that trust and confidence. So I think the keynote speaker struck a very good chord and he explained some of the reasons why traditionally in Caribbean society, there has historically been low levels of public trust and so the challenge for us is to try increase those levels and we do that through education, through sessions like these."

Daniel Ortiz
"Personally as a judge on the high court, what's your opinion of people's maybe biased to distrust judges in this current climate?"

Hon. Justice Peter Jamadar - Chairperson, CAJO
"I think first of all, we have to understand why people feel that way. We have to respect the fact that they do feel that way and out of that recognition and respect, we have to decide how to respond to regain it. So I don't think we must start by being offended, even though it may you stop and think because no one likes to be told that you are not engendering trust of confidence and respect but we have to find ways to respond, so my response to this information is, how can we do things differently and better to create more public trust and confidence."

Reporter
"In relation to delays in the delivery of justice, is that a regional challenge? Because that is something we contend with a lot in Belize."

Hon. Justice Adrian Saunders
"It certainly is a regional challenge, one of the ways we try to combat it is to encourage judiciaries to compile performance standards and to publish those performance standards so that they open themselves to the scrutiny of the public. So for example, the length of time that it ought to take for an average case to last from the time it is filed to the time it is finally disposed of, there should be a standard for that and that standard should be published, so both the judicial officers and the general public can hold the judges, hold themselves and the public hold the judges responsible for that length of time. There are also intermediate steps in between the lifespan of a case, that the time between the hearing and the delivery of the judgements similarly a performance standard should be arranged, should be agreed upon and it should be published. But certainly, the issue of standard's and in particular time standards that is very important."

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