New courts, reduced backlog part of priorities for Justice Ministry: Volney

Government’s top priority for justice include plans for at least four new High Courts along the East/West Corridor to ease the backlog of cases and offer speedier trials.

The courts would be built in St Joseph, Sangre Grande, Arima, Trincity and Valencia, according to Justice Minister Herbert Volney.

“The vision for the ministry includes the construction of new court plants along the East/West Corridor from Sangre Grande to St Joseph in order to provide court rooms to take up the load of new cases that will enter the system and it is all part of the speedier justice initiative," Volney told the Trinidad Guardian.

Volney said the Government is expected to begin the construction of “one or two” court plants by the first quarter of the new term of 2011,

He added, “By 2015 we expect that all these building would have been put up. It is an ambitions initiative that the Ministry of Justice proposes to drive because for far too long there has been a clog in the administration of justice because of the overwhelming backlog of cases.

“We must ensure that the speedier justice initiative is not ‘frustrated’ by the backlog of cases in the present system. The idea being that current cases would be dealt with within a year of charge while the older matters would continue to be tried at the same time,” Volney told the paper.

He noted that since no provision was made in the 2010/2011 budget for these projects the state would have to make additional allocations to build the courts. It would also have to find the money for new judges and support staff.

Volney said his ministry will also focus on criminal justice transformation. This involves the review of the mode of trial to allow for certain serious crimes to be tried without a judge and jury and in some cases with special juries.

This would involve the reconfiguring of the way persons are treated as suspects by the engineering of the Judges’ Rules which have not been reviewed since 1966, Volney added.

He promised consultation with various stakeholders within the next few weeks to finalise the project.

“That’s one of the top priorities for the new year. To begin the consultation process. We need to get the views of all those involved to ensure that there is a widely accepted change in the mode of trials,” Volney said.