The sorry state of the administration of justice

A report by the prisoner advocacy NGO, Mid-Dlam Għad-Dawl, draws attention to another aspect of the administration of justice that gives cause for concern with regard to the whole nature of the justice system in this country.

The report opens a window onto the fact that one in four inmates at the overcrowded Corradino Correctional Facility is there on “preventive arrest”, that is, is still innocent, awaiting trial because the court case has not yet been concluded and bail was not granted. While the report points out that the situation is worse in Italy and slightly worse in the United Kingdom (albeit there prisoners are guaranteed trial within a specific period and those found guilty have their sentence reduced accordingly), this is an unacceptable situation that needs to be remedied.

The headline statistic is actually misleading because more than half of the prisoners interviewed when drawing up the report had been in jail for more than six months, 13 per cent had been locked up for between two and four years and three per cent had been in prison for more than four years awaiting trial.

It is an even worse situation in the case of foreign inmates, especially black Africans, who complained that they were apparently “forgotten by the prison system” and had no idea what was going on in court.

The heart of the problem appears to lie in the legal aid system, which was revised following its abuse – allegedly by one unnamed lawyer – and is now set at such a meagre annual rate that many lawyers cannot be bothered to participate. The way legal aid is structured apparently leads to several prisoners in preventive arrest having no way of getting bail or, indeed, even knowing that they may apply for bail.

The research for the report also highlighted legal amendments that were not working as they were intended to. These range from how the Attorney General decides on whether to refer a case to the Magistrates’ Court or the Criminal Court with no potential to scrutinise the decision or to appeal it, to the “draconian” freezing of assets of individuals charged with minor instances of fraud, to the compilation of evidence system that “leads to a hiccupping court system with repeated six-week intervals between hearings”.

Evidently, there are broken and archaic aspects of the justice system that need fixing. At the very minimum, there appears to be an urgent need for the system of legal aid to be revised and for Criminal Code amendments to be assessed and reviewed periodically to ensure that they are operating as intended by legislators.

But the problems of the administration of justice appear to be more deep-rooted. With every report that is published, whether by formal inquiries, by NGOs or even by individual members of Parliament, a new light is shed on a system that is not working as it should.

The administration of the law courts, the length of time it takes for cases to be decided, the quality and state of morale of the judiciary and the magistracy, concerns about the role of the Commission for the Administration of Justice, all point to a system that is creaking and that is in need of urgent attention.

This aspect needs to be considered within the wider picture of justice and the rule of law. A prison system that is badly managed and under-resourced and a police force whose professionalism is suffering also because it is overworked and understaffed exacerbate an already complex problem.