Janet Silvera and Athaliah Reynolds, Gleaner Writers

Lightbourne

WESTERN BUREAU:

Justice Minister Dorothy Lightbourne has summoned the heads of the island's bar associations to a meeting today at which the current stand-off between attorneys and the president of the Resident Magistrates' Association, Marlene Malahoo Forte, is expected to top the agenda.

Despite pressure from attorneys, Malahoo Forte, who sits in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate's Court, is insisting that some attorneys are "hustlers".

She made the comment during a Gleaner Editors' Forum on Tuesday.

Controversial proposal

The acrimony between Malahoo Forte and lawyers will not be the only issue on the agenda at the meeting scheduled for 3 p.m. The controversial proposal to increase the length of time persons can be detained without charge will also be up for discussion.

"We were invited by the minister to discuss matters of great importance to the legal profession and the justice administration," Clayton Morgan, president of the Cornwall Bar Association, told The Gleaner yesterday.

In the meantime, Morgan said his association would be submitting a response to the "injudicious outburst" by Malahoo Forte.

His counterpart, president of the Southern Bar Association, Donna Scott-Mottley, said she accepted that there were problems with some attorneys, but argued that it was inappropriate for a person in Malahoo Forte's position to raise the issue in the way she did.

"She should have been more judicious, dialogue in the right forum would have sufficed," Scott-Mottley said, cautioning that Malahoo Forte's recent statements did not encourage proper relations.

According to the Southern Bar Association president, the other areas to be discussed in the meeting include the justice administration reform programme.

"The minister really wants to meet with us to get our views on a number of areas and we are very appreciative of the opportunity," she said.

Earlier this month, shortly after Prime Minister Bruce Golding announced that consideration was being given to extending the period for which persons can be detained without charge, the Jamaican Bar Association claimed the police had already started detaining citizens for more than the 48 hours currently allowed.

Lengthy detention

In a statement, the association said the experience had shown that the lengthy detention of persons had served to alienate hundreds of young people and their families from the legal system.

Yesterday, Minister of National Security, Colonel Trevor MacMillan, said he was in full agreement with the proposal to increase the time the police can hold persons in detention before charging them.

MacMillan, a founding member of human rights lobby group Jamaicans For Justice (JFJ), argued that the rights of the innocent Jamaicans being killed by criminals should take precedence.

"The human rights of the greater majority are what is important to me," he told The Gleaner yesterday.

The national security minister said the proposal to extend detentions was now before the office of the attorney general for review.

Yesterday, Dr Carolyn Gomes, executive director of JFJ, maintained her stance that such a measure would be counterproductive.

She said the nation could end up with an increase in violent crimes, rather than the expected reduction.

"JFJ is yet to be convinced that detaining people for any specific period of time without charge or, even after charge, without habeas corpus, is going to do anything other than make them resentful and uncooperative," said Dr Gomes.