High case disposal rates in parish courts
Published:Monday | March 2, 2020 | 12:00 AMNickoy Wilson/Staff Reporter
The majority of cases brought before the island’s parish courts over the last three years have been disposed of in half the standard time, according to Chief Justice Bryan Sykes, citing statistics from the Parish Courts of Jamaica 2019 annual report.
The disposal rate is the proportion of new cases filed within a particular period that have been disposed of within that similar time frame.
The island’s top judge made the revelation while speaking at the launch of the National Conference on Technology in the Justice Sector at the AC Marriot Hotel in St Andrew, where he also announced that a new case-management system will be introduced soon.
“The parish courts are not as inefficient as we have believed. Our time standard is 24 months from entry to disposition. From a sample of 61,700 cases examined, would you believe that across all the parishes, 83 per cent of the cases were disposed of in 12 months?” Sykes asked rhetorically, citing the period of September 2016 to December 2019.
He added, “So, the real issue is 17 per cent, and that is where our efforts need to be focused. So, if a new software that is to come on stream [does], and assuming it does what is required of it and, more importantly, the staff and the judges are comfortable with it and can use it, it should make an important difference.”
With the new software, Sykes said, cases that used to be scheduled over several months, causing inconvenience to the court and lawyers alike, would now be streamlined.
According to the report, published on the Supreme Court’s website, there was a case disposal rate of 73.75 per cent last year, compared to 70.92 per cent over the corresponding period in 2018.