In Trinidad and To­ba­go, the his­tor­i­cal­ly poor func­tion­ing of the ju­di­cial sys­tem has re­sult­ed in an over­in­car­cer­a­tion of of­fend­ers and overuse of re­mand for lengthy pe­ri­ods.

The prison re­cidi­vism rate was up 51 per cent in 2018 which meant more per­sons were re­turn­ing to jail and the month­ly up­keep for an in­mate at the Re­mand Yard stood at TTD $15,736.

This cost was fur­ther ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the phys­i­cal trans­porta­tion need­ed to car­ry these pris­on­ers and re­man­dees back and forth to the var­i­ous Courts (a cost of 80 mil­lion per year) as dur­ing the 2018-2019 Law Term, 591 mat­ters of the 822 mat­ters list­ed for hear­ing at the High Court were ad­journed.

All of this con­tributed to re­man­dees re­main­ing for lengthy pe­ri­ods in prison. These re­man­dees still had their pre­sump­tion of in­no­cence and were pa­tient­ly wait­ing for their day in court.

With­in the past week, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi an­nounced the im­pend­ing us­age of 12 vir­tu­al courts in our na­tion. He in­di­cat­ed this step was be­ing done in tan­dem with elec­tron­ic fa­cil­i­ties on the part of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), which is al­so con­duct­ing vir­tu­al hear­ings.

Dur­ing this un­cer­tain time of covid-19, the Caribbean Cen­tre for Hu­man Rights ap­plauds the Gov­ern­ment in elim­i­nat­ing the need for phys­i­cal trans­porta­tion of pris­on­ers and re­man­dees to the Courts. Their de­po­si­tions and oth­er re­lat­ed mat­ters will be con­duct­ed via video con­fer­enc­ing, speed­ing up the Court’s process whilst elim­i­nat­ing the cost­ly need for trans­porta­tion and si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly re­duc­ing the back­log with­in the ju­di­cial sys­tem. But there are still im­por­tant ques­tions to be con­sid­ered.

Is this col­lab­o­ra­tion of the jus­tice sec­tors not is what is need­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go to re­duce the pre-tri­al de­ten­tion pe­ri­od. a pe­ri­od where it has be­come the norm for re­man­dees to re­main for ten-plus years in these pris­ons and where some are even con­sid­ered to be ‘lost’ in jail?

The Caribbean Cen­ter for Hu­man Rights ap­plauds these ini­tia­tives and hope that these tech­no­log­i­cal ini­tia­tives and new in­fra­struc­tures which are clear­ly aimed at fa­cil­i­tat­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion be con­tin­ued to im­prove the ac­cess to and qual­i­ty of the im­ple­men­ta­tion of jus­tice And the ac­knowl­edge­ment Hu­man Rights of peo­ple in­car­cer­at­ed in pris­ons

Reyan­na Sankar