Editorial | Technology in the courts

Chief Justice Bryan Sykes will have gained broad attention with his latest declaration of his intention to make digital/computer technology central to the operation of Jamaica’s courts.

What Justice Sykes must now do is reduce his ideas to implementable projects, with specific timelines for their implementation. Which would mean that he already discussed the projects with the relevant government ministries and agencies and received commitment for their funding. He has only spoken broadly of a five-year “reorientation” of the court system, whose service delivery is underpinned by technology.

Indeed, Justice Sykes’ wish for a legacy as a systemic reformer of the modern Jamaican court will depend heavily on how well he achieves this goal. But, it is not only his reputation and legacy that will benefit. The greater beneficiaries will be Jamaicans, in the timely justice they receive.

When he became the head of the judiciary in 2018, Justice Sykes pledged to make Jamaica’s court system world-class in six years, a deadline that is fast approaching. A key goal was for cases in the system to be heard within two years.

Justice Sykes will no doubt insist, with substantial credibility, that he has already reached several of his benchmarks, most notably, the reduction of backlog and reducing the timeframe for disposing of cases in the parish courts, formerly resident magistrate’s courts.

Two years ago, cases in these courts, where most Jamaicans interact with the justice system, were being disposed of in an average of 15 months. That has fallen to around a year. In other words, the performance outcomes are ahead of schedule.

CUT THROUGH BACKLOGS

To achieve this, the parish courts have cut through their backlogs – the excess of new filings over cases cleared during a year – faster than was programmed. They were to reach the international benchmark of a five per cent backlog by 2026. But earlier this year, Justice Sykes reported that it was down to 1.3 per cent for active cases.

“There are no other courts in the region – not in the Caribbean, not in Central America, not in South America – that have achieved that for courts at that level,” the chief justice said. “That has placed us in a position now to revise the time standard downwards.”

In fact, with 77 per cent of parish court cases disposed of in under a year, he said, the current trajectory for cases, on average, to be cleared in nine months.

This performance has not been matched at the Supreme Court, where more complicated civil and criminal matters are heard. The benchmark for matters to be completed is two years. In 2022, based on the court’s statistical report, the case clearance rate was 75 per cent.

Delivering on the 24-month time frame for disposing of cases, therefore, demands, according to the court’s statistical report, “a weighted case clearance rate of 130 per cent over the next three years across the court system”. That would bring the systemic backlog rate to within the five per cent global average, and achieve the 24-month average time for cases to be cleared.

But, while at the Supreme Court 75 cases were cleared last year for every 100 filed, only 62.46 per cent of those matters were disposed of within the two-year deadline. In other words, of the cleared cases, 37.5 per cent were from the backlogged bundle.

PRESSURE FOR IMPROVEMENT

There is, therefore, substantial pressure for improvement in the Supreme Court’s performance if Justice Sykes is to fully deliver on his promise of a court delivering with world-class efficiency.

“The idea is that as time goes on, we will be introducing the system in which all matters will have to be originated electronically,” the chief justice told last week’s annual conference of The Jamaican Bar Association. “The proposed system will have end-to-end digitisation – that is, from filing initially to final disposition in the digital environment.”

He expects that such a system will enhance efficiency and timeliness and contribute to the elimination of backlog. But, as Justice Sykes observed, these ideas are not new and in the past, anticipated benefits from the introduction of new technologies in Jamaica’s courts did not materialise.

There is, for instance, the recent judgment by Justice Leighton Pusey that took eight years to deliver, in part because a voice-to-text programme introduced to the system did not, as the judge put it, “live up to expectations”.

This, and others, are lessons to be acknowledged and learnt from. Which is why Justice Sykes must urgently involve all stakeholders in this potentially transformative project. They can help to ensure that it is the best, and most appropriate, system that is commissioned and that it will be paid for.