Delroy Chuck
FOR ANYONE who has suffered a legal wrong, a human rights abuse, a personal attack, or has been subjected to unlawful behaviour or an act of injustice, it becomes a challenging task to get justice. Accessing the machinery of justice to preserve and enforce one's rights is a maze and mystery of Jamaican governance. When citizens cannot access and get justice, they quickly lose faith in the state's ability to provide what is rightfully due and, desperately, seek alternative measures to restore their sense of justice.
Of all the commodities, facilities and services provided, a government's primary duty is to dispense justice in a timely and accessible manner. In human society, things will go wrong, errors occur, conflicts emerge and interactions will turn sour - to right the wrongs and to settle disputes fairly is the surest foundation of good government. When the system of justice fails to resolve disputes, redress wrongs and apprehend and punish criminals within a reasonable time, it opens the door - if ever so slightly - to anarchy and lawlessness, which seem to be happening everywhere.
PAIN AND HEARTACHE
Acts of revenge and reprisals are significant causes of violence, and responsible for untold pain and heartache and, increasingly, nourish cycles of evil and tragedy. We will never know in our culture of violence what percentage is motivated by revenge, as so many murders are unsolved and the motives undetermined. Disappointingly, people take it upon themselves to exact justice. They lack confidence in the justice system to give wrongdoers their just deserts. Yet, those of us who want to live in a civilised society must condemn every act of lawlessness, of extra-judicial punishment and of unlawful self-help. We must continue to respect even the tottering legal system and strive to find solutions to its inordinate delays and inexplicable failures.
In today's Jamaica, the access to justice is a complex, inconvenient, costly and challenging task. No wonder the cries for justice reverberate loudly. The citizens' rights and freedoms are abused with impunity and no one seems to care. Outside the court system, there must be pathways for the people's cries to receive a ready response and appease their anger. To be sure, the Opposition should be championing the cause and it has. Some 15 years ago, the Opposition demanded the creation of an advocate general to assist citizens to get constitutional and legal redress for human rights abuses, and an independent body to investigate police misconduct and excesses.
The Office of the Public Defender was created but to what end? The Public Defender's Office should have been proactive in defending the constitutional rights and freedoms of the people, and prosecuting their abuses. At the time of its creation, we anticipated the Public Defender taking numerous cases to court annually to send the forceful lessons that the dignity of every individual, in whatever station of life, must be respected and protected. To date, what has the Public Defender done of which Jamaicans are aware and of which we can be proud?
LOST CAUSE
The Police Public Complaints Authority (PPCA) has been a toothless tiger. It lacks resources, personnel and authority to bring police officers into line, and is now largely ignored by virtually everyone. In the beginning, it was touted as the independent body to investigate police abuses and to bring wayward policemen before the court. Definitely, it was created to respond to allegations of police misconduct and to calm the rage of families whose loved ones have been allegedly abused, injured or killed by policemen. But, nowadays, it has become a lost cause. No one even knows where to find its offices and, even if one did, one cannot be sure that the complaints will ever be adequately dealt with.
Human Rights bodies such as Jamaicans for Justice, Families against State Terrorism and the Independent Council of Human Rights are doing the main work that the Offices of the Public Defender and the PPCA have the responsibilities to discharge. Sadly, even when the matters totter to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and, ultimately, the courts, the protracted delays make the access to justice a sure denial of justice.
Delroy Chuck is an attorney-at-law and Member of Parliament. He can be contacted by email at Delchuck@Hotmail.Com.
