Legal Aid Council Assists 1,524 Clients

The Legal Aid Council assisted 1,524 clients through duty counsel services and legal representation in 2021.

Additionally, representation was provided for 59 persons with mental illness who were held on remand and deemed unfit to plead or held in adult correctional facilities at the Governor-General’s or the Court’s pleasure.

As reported in the Economic and Social Survey Jamaica 2021, a total of 748 beneficiaries were assisted through the services of the Mobile Justice Unit, which employed a blended approach of face-to-face and virtual consultations.

“Visits were made to 30 communities in which legal services were provided to 289 beneficiaries, while 471 virtual consultations were conducted,” the document outlined.

Meanwhile, the Criminal, Civil and Family Law Unit processed 1,130 expungement applications (847 male applicants).

From this total, 769 applications (549 male applicants) were approved by the Criminal Records (Rehabilitation of Offenders) Board.

“This represented a 95.7 per cent increase in approvals, compared with 2020.

The increase in approvals is due to the Unit, again, operating at pre-pandemic levels, as approvals had declined by 62.4 per cent in 2020,” the Survey stated.

The Unit also processed 6,752 applications for Minister’s Marriage Licences, of which 4,097 were from walk-in clients, while 2,655 were submitted by hotels. This was an increase of 2.9 per cent compared with 2020.

Additionally, there was a 16.2 per cent reduction in the number of walk-in applications, while hotel applications increased by 58.7 per cent, which might be attributed to the gradual lifting of measures implemented to manage the COVID-19 pandemic.