In a week that starts with to­mor­row’s ob­ser­vance of World Hu­man Rights Day, T&T is tak­ing a ma­jor step to­ward im­prov­ing and mod­ernising its crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Procla­ma­tion of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act, 2011 (AJI­PA), and its six amend­ing acts on Tues­day will great­ly im­prove chances for cit­i­zens to ac­cess an im­por­tant hu­man right — time­ly ac­cess to jus­tice.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour’s sur­pris­ing­ly low-key an­nounce­ment by way of a me­dia re­lease on Thurs­day her­alds the end of the painful­ly time con­sum­ing pre­lim­i­nary in­quiries that are among the biggest con­trib­u­tors to the back­log of court cas­es.

It has tak­en decades to im­ple­ment a more ef­fi­cient and stream­lined sys­tem for the dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice for vic­tims of crime, as well as ac­cused per­sons, so to say that this mea­sure is long over­due would be an un­der­state­ment.

The AJI­PA, which was in­tro­duced in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives by AG Ar­mour last May, re­places pre­lim­i­nary in­quiries with ini­tial and suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ings by a Mas­ter of the High Court.

It is the lat­est in a se­ries of re­forms, leg­isla­tive and oth­er­wise, such as cre­ation of new court di­vi­sions at Tow­er D of the Port-of-Spain In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre for crim­i­nal, fam­i­ly and chil­dren and civ­il mat­ters, and the en­act­ment of the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Tri­al by Judge Alone) Act, which has re­sult­ed in some High Court mat­ters be­ing com­plet­ed quick­er than ju­ry tri­als.

The AJI­PA will re­duce the length of time ac­cused per­sons spend in pre-tri­al cus­tody, eas­ing the strain on the coun­try’s over­crowd­ed re­mand fa­cil­i­ties.

Pris­on­ers on re­mand make up more than two-thirds of the prison pop­u­la­tion, with some spend­ing a decade or more be­hind bars af­ter their ar­rest await­ing the com­ple­tion of pre­lim­i­nary in­quiries to de­ter­mine if there is suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to make out a pri­ma fa­cie case.

There have been cas­es where pris­on­ers spent more time on re­mand than the max­i­mum sen­tence for their al­leged crimes.

These in­or­di­nate de­lays have erod­ed cit­i­zens’ faith in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem be­cause too of­ten, jus­tice has not been seen to be done.

The most glar­ing ex­am­ple was a pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry start­ed in 2004, that arose from the con­struc­tion of Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, which last­ed for 15 years.

The AJI­PA is a long await­ed op­por­tu­ni­ty to put these shame­ful ex­am­ples of in­jus­tice be­hind us.

How­ev­er, there is still much to be done for the im­prove­ment and mod­erni­sa­tion of T&T’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

Al­though the abo­li­tion of pre­lim­i­nary in­quiries will ease the bur­den on mag­is­trates’ courts, they are still stretched be­yond ca­pac­i­ty with just 50 mag­is­trates to han­dle the thou­sands of cas­es that are filed an­nu­al­ly.

The un­der­staffed Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) al­so re­quires ur­gent at­ten­tion. A Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) rec­om­men­da­tion for an in­de­pen­dent re­view of the DPP’s Of­fice to ex­am­ine “case man­age­ment strate­gies, time­lines, fre­quen­cy of in­dict­ments filed, num­ber of dis­con­tin­u­ances, re­cidi­vism rates, di­ver­sion rates, and oth­er met­rics to eval­u­ate pros­e­cu­tor per­for­mance” should be a pri­or­i­ty.

How­ev­er, oth­er mea­sures are need­ed to bring the Ju­di­cia­ry ful­ly in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry, such as greater use of plea-bar­gain­ing to fur­ther re­duce back­logs in cas­es and pas­sage of oth­er pieces of leg­is­la­tion to im­prove the way T&T’s courts dis­pense jus­tice.

It is time to make jus­tice de­layed or de­nied a thing of the past.