Justice system stakeholders urged to make views known
December 04, 2006
Stakeholders in the nation's justice system are being urged to make their views known to the Canadian Advisory Committee which is assisting the newly-formed Jamaican Justice Reform Task Force.
The task force is developing a comprehensive programme for the modernisation of the system.
Chief Justice Lensley Wolfe and Appeal Court Judge Seymour Panton are members of the task force. Professor Barrington Chevannes, director of the Centre for Public Safety and Justice, UWI, Mona, chairs the 28-member task force.
Several attorneys-at-law, police officers and jurors have welcomed the move for the modernisation and have pointed to some important areas that should not be overlooked.
The Canadian consultants would do well, they say, to have a look at the Corporate Area Coroner's Court, 79 Duke Street, just below Gordon House, and the Traffic Court on South Camp Road, central Kingston.
Apart from the deplorable conditions in which the staffers have to work at the Coroner's Court, it is not unusual for the Coroner and other officers of the court to have to go to the ground floor to take depositions from infirm witnesses who can't walk to the third floor, there being no elevator in the building.
Motorists have complained that the parking facilities at the Traffic Court are most inadequate. Even worse, they say, is the fact that there is an infant school next door which gives the impression that it is a school for the dumb, so constrained are the tots not to make any noise which could disturb the court - even during their play time.
Health hazards
A juror who last week attended at the Home Circuit Court in the Supreme Court building, King Street, downtown Kingston, pointed to strips of 'carpet' which were used for decoration on the walls below the air-conditioning units and remarked that they were 'health hazards' which should be removed immediately....
Author: Barbara Gayle
Source: Jamaica Gleaner
