Gail Alexan­der

An amend­ed Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Of­fences) Amend­ment Bill 2025, con­cern­ing Jus­tices of the Peace, was passed in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie promis­ing to pur­sue leg­isla­tive re­form for bet­ter stan­dards of be­hav­iour on the part of JPs.

The bill was passed with 24 votes from the Gov­ern­ment and all In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors. The six Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tors vot­ed against it.

Je­re­mie, pi­lot­ing the bill, said it sought to “rem­e­dy” is­sues con­cern­ing search war­rants and grant­i­ng of bail for in­dictable mat­ters since the 2023 amend­ment of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice bill re­moved JPs from this.

He cit­ed con­cerns from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice about work be­ing ham­pered when oth­er le­gal of­fi­cers were un­avail­able to han­dle mat­ters.

Af­ter con­cerns from the Op­po­si­tion and some In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors, Je­re­mie, wind­ing up de­bate, ad­mit­ted, “The sys­tem isn’t per­fect. You have some cor­rupt JPs; they aren’t the on­ly ones in the so­ci­ety who are cor­rupt. But you do have some cor­rupt JPs, and that has to be dealt with.” He gave an un­der­tak­ing to do a ref­er­ence to the Law Re­form Com­mis­sion, which is in the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice, “...To tell us how we can look at leg­isla­tive re­form to treat with bet­ter stan­dards of be­hav­iour on the part of Jus­tices of the Peace,”

In de­bate, Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi, ex­press­ing con­cern about al­low­ing JPs to is­sue search war­rants, not­ed the Brent Thomas case, where the judge said no JP should have is­sued the war­rants in that mat­ter. In view of that, Al-Rawi ques­tioned al­low­ing search war­rants to be is­sued by JPs dur­ing a state of emer­gency.

“We’re on the slip­pery slope where the best in­ten­tions may cause prob­lems,” he said.

Al-Rawi added, “With­out be­ing pe­jo­ra­tive in any ex­pres­sion to JPs, I’ve seen drunk JPs is­sue war­rants. This is some­thing I know for a fact. Dan­ger­ous!”

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Sophia Chote said she could not sup­port the bill in those cir­cum­stances and amend­ments which gave broad pow­er to JPs.

“I’m not here to throw ‘shade’ at JPs and they do serve an im­por­tant func­tion, but they need to be up­skilled, reg­u­lat­ed and held ac­count­able,” she said.

Chote said she’d come across a sit­u­a­tion where a JP once fell ill and some “clever po­lice of­fi­cers” used his stamp and sig­na­ture to is­sue war­rants.

Not­ing JPs were un­reg­u­lat­ed, Chote said that un­less there was a sys­tem for ac­count­abil­i­ty, she couldn’t sup­port JPs hav­ing the pow­er that the law was giv­ing.

Chote ques­tioned what dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion JPs face when act­ing im­prop­er­ly. To al­low them to is­sue war­rants for in­ter­cep­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tion in light of all that had been said would be an ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion, she added.