Malahoo Forte: No one will be lost in custody again
Minister gives assurance as deliberations continue over new Bail Act
Published:Friday | December 16, 2022 | 2:02 AMEdmond Campbell/Senior Parliamentary Reporter
A legislative fix has been found to plug a hole in the judicial system that caused 81-year-old Noel Chambers to die in a correctional facility in June 2020 after a 40-year wait for trial.
That’s the word from Minister of Legal and Constitutional Affairs Marlene Malahoo Forte.
There were loud cries of injustice across Jamaica, with the courts and the correctional services blamed for a human rights crisis after an Independent Commission of Investigations report unearthed the story about Chambers and about 145 other mentally ill people at the time who were being held for years – even decades – without trial.
During Thursday’s deliberations on the Bail Act 2022, Fitz Jackson, a member of a joint select committee considering the proposed law, made reference to the Chambers incident while seeking assurances from committee chair Malahoo Forte that provisions would be inserted in the bill to safeguard against such occurrences and to hold someone accountable for any breach of procedure.
Addressing Section 11(3) of the bill, Malahoo Forte told Jackson and other committee members that this provision would ensure that “insofar as the legislator’s duty goes, no one will be lost in custody again”.
The provision states that “a judge of the court concerned shall, at least once every two weeks, carry out a review of cases involving defendants who were granted bail, in relation to offences to be tried before that court, but who were unable to take up such bail ... ”.
It further states that a list of those defendants shall be supplied to the court on Monday of each week. In the case of defendants held in a lock-up or correctional centre, the list is to be supplied by the person in charge of the facility.
“We are imposing a mandatory duty on the judge to ensure that everyone who is in lock-up is reviewed fortnightly,” the committee chairperson said.
“When we talk about the bill being evidence-based, these are the provisions that reflect the evidence that we consider, and the concern has been constantly raised in the criminal justice system and in the wider society on issues, and they are being addressed,” Malahoo Forte added.
She also pointed out that everyone who has a duty to prepare the list has been identified. As such, nobody can escape responsibility, owing to the careful design of the proposed law.
Turning to the absconding of bail, Malahoo Forte warned that stiffer penalties are coming for that offence.
Section 14 of the Bail Act 2022 states that a defendant who is on bail commits an offence if that defendant fails to surrender to custody or “having reasonable excuse for failing to surrender to custody, fails to surrender to custody as soon as possible after the time originally appointed for the defendant to surrender to custody”.
A person on bail who absconds and is convicted could face imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years if the matter is tried in a parish court. However, if a person is convicted of a similar offence before a Circuit Court, the offender could be slapped with a seven-year sentence.
A defence is provided in the proposed law whereby the defendant could offer a reasonable excuse for failing to surrender to custody.
Malahoo Forte told her parliamentary colleagues that, if a defendant is found guilty of absconding bail, the sentence will run consecutively in relation to the original offence for which the person had now been convicted.