The Ju­di­cia­ry has reaf­firmed its pol­i­cy on vir­tu­al hear­ings in crim­i­nal mat­ters, stress­ing that peo­ple charged with of­fences must ap­pear on the same day via video link with­out be­ing trans­port­ed to a cour­t­house.

“This arrange­ment does not con­vert po­lice sta­tions in­to court­rooms—it just puts the ac­cused in front of a com­put­er for a vir­tu­al ap­pear­ance,” the Ju­di­cia­ry clar­i­fied in a state­ment.

Yes­ter­day, Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Is­rael Khan SC, called on the Chief Jus­tice to ex­plain why vir­tu­al courts are still op­er­at­ing out of po­lice sta­tions.

SC Khan raised the is­sue af­ter Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der called on the Ju­di­cia­ry to va­cate po­lice sta­tions.

In a state­ment on Sat­ur­day, the Ju­di­cia­ry said for all sub­se­quent hear­ings, in­clud­ing tri­als, ac­cused per­sons are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear from one of three lo­ca­tions: a prison if they are not on bail; a Ju­di­cia­ry Vir­tu­al Ac­cess Cus­tomer Cen­tre (VACC); or a court­room where the mat­ter is be­ing heard in per­son. Some VACC fa­cil­i­ties are lo­cat­ed with­in court build­ings.

The Ju­di­cia­ry un­der­scored that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) had pre­vi­ous­ly ad­vised that it could no longer staff the courts ex­cept for hear­ings in­volv­ing pris­on­ers in the dock.

“This lim­i­ta­tion cur­rent­ly shapes how the Ju­di­cia­ry op­er­ates. To sup­port vir­tu­al ap­pear­ances, the Ju­di­cia­ry has re­quest­ed the TTPS pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty at VACC fa­cil­i­ties when need­ed,” the re­lease said.

All types of cas­es—in­clud­ing Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence, Civ­il, Fam­i­ly, and ap­peals – are now fa­cil­i­tat­ed vir­tu­al­ly or in hy­brid for­mats, which com­bine in-per­son and vir­tu­al par­tic­i­pa­tion. Ac­cord­ing to the Ju­di­cia­ry, pub­lic feed­back has been “ex­cel­lent”, though im­prove­ments re­main on­go­ing to fur­ther en­hance con­ve­nience and ef­fi­cien­cy.

The Ju­di­cia­ry high­light­ed sev­er­al ben­e­fits of the sys­tem, such as en­abling le­gal of­fi­cers and at­tor­neys to hear mat­ters in­volv­ing wit­ness­es lo­cat­ed both lo­cal­ly and abroad, and re­duc­ing the fi­nan­cial bur­den of trans­port­ing pris­on­ers for every hear­ing or ad­journ­ment.

“The Ju­di­cia­ry looks for­ward to meet­ing with the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter to dis­cuss this and oth­er mat­ters in sup­port of ear­ly ac­cess to jus­tice,” the state­ment con­clud­ed.

“The Ju­di­cia­ry would not like to re­vert to a low­er and slow­er lev­el of ac­tiv­i­ty caused by the in­abil­i­ty to have vir­tu­al hear­ings, or to the high ex­pen­di­ture re­quired by hav­ing to trans­port all ac­cused per­sons for each and every ap­pear­ance or ad­journ­ment,” the state­ment not­ed.

Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj says the Gov­ern­ment will be meet­ing with Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie soon in the hope of un­der­stand­ing the state of courts around the coun­try and oth­er re­lat­ed is­sues.