An­na-Lisa Paul

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Garvin Nicholas and re­tired High Court judge Her­bert Vol­ney have added their voic­es to those call­ing for swift jus­tice to be de­liv­ered on peo­ple who breach the law.

Call­ing for the re­sump­tion of whip­ping – in pub­lic - which he be­lieves will be a se­ri­ous de­ter­rent to many of those found to be guilty of sex­u­al of­fences, Vol­ney said this par­tic­u­lar pun­ish­ment is al­ready on the law books and just needs to be en­forced.

How­ev­er, both men agreed the es­tab­lish­ment of ad­di­tion­al courts and the ex­pan­sion of the mag­is­tra­cy was ur­gent­ly need­ed to deal with the ever in­creas­ing case-load.

Her­bert Vol­ney

Rec­om­mend­ing that ad­di­tion­al courts be set up to deal with mat­ters that oc­cur present­ly in­stead of send­ing per­sons to lan­guish in jail for years, the for­mer judge said, “I have al­ways felt that crim­i­nals and those who would be­come crim­i­nals, that they are not fear­ful of the law. There is no con­se­quence to crim­i­nal­i­ty and as a re­sult, they think they can get away with it.”

He added, “They see crim­i­nal­i­ty as a method of en­hance­ment in their own qual­i­ty of life.”

This, cou­pled with the risk of get­ting caught and pros­e­cut­ed are very slim – “per­haps less than ten per cent, and they are pre­pared to take their chances and there are few ex­am­ples for them to see as in years past…when you would see crim­i­nals be­ing whipped or jailed. That is not tak­ing place to­day be­cause of a fail­ing jus­tice sys­tem where thou­sands of cas­es are lined up wait­ing to be tried.”

Vol­ney sug­gest­ed new courts be set up to deal with cur­rent mat­ters, while ex­ist­ing courts tack­le the back-log of mat­ters wait­ing to be heard.

He be­lieves if a crim­i­nal is tried and con­vict­ed with­in 20 months of be­ing held, “The pub­lic will feel a sense of jus­tice be­ing served and will co­op­er­ate with law en­force­ment be­cause they know the crim­i­nal has been locked up. The de­ter­rent can­not come 20 years af­ter the crime.”

As the last judge to or­der whip­ping, Vol­ney be­lieves the re-in­tro­duc­tion of such a cor­po­ral act will be a ma­jor de­ter­rent to some crim­i­nals.

In­di­cat­ing the pun­ish­ment was al­ready on the law books, he ques­tioned, “What has hap­pened to this?”

“Any crime in­volv­ing vi­o­lence can at­tract a whip­ping so why aren’t our judges whip­ping peo­ple again?”

Vol­ney said when de­tained per­sons learn that oth­er in­mates have been sub­ject­ed to such pun­ish­ment which should al­so be done in the open court­yard to oth­ers can see – it will be a de­ter­rent.

He said a hang­ing in Wood­ford Square would be much more of a de­ter­rent than a hang­ing be­hind closed doors.

Dis­ap­point­ed that the law was there but not be­ing used as it should, Vol­ney said re­cent and not on­ly old mat­ters must be tried, so this will re­store the pub­lic’s con­fi­dence in the TTPS and the Ju­di­cia­ry.

“When you are wait­ing on 200 and 300 mur­der tri­als to take place, most of which the ac­cused will walk away be­cause wit­ness­es are ei­ther bumped off or no longer in­ter­est­ed…that is not a de­ter­rent.”

Garvin Nicholas:

“At the mo­ment, every judge and every mag­is­trate has the pow­er to lim­it or even de­ny bail based on the cir­cum­stances that is be­fore him or her.”

While the move to de­ny a per­son bail in­def­i­nite­ly would not be con­sid­ered good for the jus­tice sys­tem or for hu­man rights or for the rule of law, Nicholas said, “What you have to do more than ever is en­sure swift jus­tice so that if you are go­ing to de­ny some­body bail, you must en­sure they must be pros­e­cut­ed in the short­est pos­si­ble time and there­fore, mat­ters can­not be lin­ger­ing for years or even months be­cause that in it­self cre­ates a big­ger prob­lem.”

Claim­ing the de­ter­rent came from per­sons know­ing there would be con­se­quences to their ac­tions, the for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al said when mat­ters con­tin­ue to drag on and then Pratt and Mor­gan comes in­to play to save some per­sons from the hang­man’s noose – it was not off putting for the crim­i­nals.

He said, “It must be swift ar­rest, swift pros­e­cu­tion, and swift jus­tice as that is what crim­i­nals would fear the most.”

Call­ing for a more ef­fi­cient op­er­a­tion from Foren­sics Sci­ence Cen­tre, Nicholas out­lined the short­com­ings ex­pe­ri­enced over the years which he said had ham­pered the quick pros­e­cu­tion of mat­ters.