Judiciary Strategic Plan Bearing Fruit

Implementation of the Strategic Plan for the Jamaican Judiciary 2019-2023 to improve court performance has been bearing fruit.

Chief Justice, Hon. Bryan Sykes, said the goal of the plan was to not only improve court performance but also to improve service delivery to citizens.

“By 2023, after four years, we saw improvement in the parish courts, Civil and Criminal Division in particular, where those courts are backlog-free from the standpoint that under five per cent of active cases are in backlog. In fact, it is under three per cent in both civil and criminal, so that objective has been achieved. The challenge now is, now that you are out of backlog, to maintain [it],” Justice Sykes told JIS News in an interview.

He also mentioned the use of a differentiated case management (DCM) system to manage cases within the courts.

The system is designed to transform court processes by reducing delays and eliminating the backlog of cases.

Justice Sykes pointed out that not all cases within the court system need to be managed in the same way, adding that simpler cases should go through faster, while the very complex cases should take a bit longer but still within an overall time frame.

“So, what the differentiated case management technique does is that it allows judicial officers to determine how long the case should take, because there are time standards for the different types of cases,” the Chief Justice said.

“The expectation is that, over time, the differentiated case management will become embedded. The Court of Appeal has implemented it and they are going to be doing further reforms in the coming Hilary term for 2024. So, at the end of 2024 we should see the result of that,” he added.

Justice Sykes also informed that the DCM will be introduced formally for civil cases within the parish court system.

He stated that it has been introduced in respect of the criminal cases in the parish court system and “so far, we have been able to reduce the time that cases take through the parish courts”.

“So, the consequence has been with the introduction of the Differentiated Case Management and other improvements, that we are now in a position to say that the time standard for criminal cases in the parish courts is coming down and no case going forward should take longer than 15 months maximum,” Justice Sykes said.

He noted that this means that when persons have criminal cases in the parish courts, they will know exactly when the case is expected to be completed.

“We want to improve on the civil side by having the differentiated case management become a part of how those courts are managed, so they can improve efficiency, and we are going to be doing the same thing here within the Supreme Court,” the Chief Justice said.