Chief Justice Lensley Wolfe (centre); permanent secretary in the Ministry of Justice, Carol Palmer (second right) and executive administrator at the Supreme Court, Gregory Girard (left) listen to an animated conversation between Carol Hibbert (second left), formerly of the Trinidad and Tobago Supreme Court, and Carlene Cross, administrator at the Supreme Court in Trinidad and Tobago. Hibbert and Cross, who were in Jamaica recently to assist in the automation of the Supreme Court registry, also met with officials from the Ministry of Justice to discuss the social conflict and legal reform programme.

A new filing software is being introduced at the Supreme Court's registry to facilitate the prompt retrieval of files for court hearings.

Called the Judicial Enforcement Management System (JEMS), the case management software is being installed incrementally under the Social Conflict and Legal Reform programme.
The move forms part of measures to install a fully computerised filing and tracking system to expedite trials.
The software package is designed to manage criminal, civil and traffic cases and allows authorised users to add, maintain, display and print information associated with these cases.

Registrar Nicole Simmonds said the JEMS software has been used successfully by courts in Trinidad and Tobago and Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) countries. Consultants from these countries, she said, have been visiting the island over the last three years to assist in the installation of the system.
Highlighting one aspect of the software, Simmonds pointed out that matters were now numbered sequentially instead of alphabetically, which sometimes caused name confusion. But with the automatic generation of numbers, she added, it was easier to look at a casebook and determine how many matters had been filed to date.

An advantage of this approach, she boasted, was the ability of the court to set dates immediately instead of requesting that persons returned for a further trial date.
"We do have an extensive trial list and we are hoping that with case management and mediation, the trial list will be reduced and matters can be disposed of in a just manner, so that persons will feel that they have been heard in Court.
"Our ultimate aim is the timely delivery of justice," Simmonds stressed.

Meanwhile, for employees who have been accustomed to searching through thousands of paper to retrieve files for Court hearings, the computerisation of the registry has injected new life into how they work.
Robert Osbourne, who has been working at the registry for eight years, said, "instead of taking documents from the registry to the chamber, the information can be accessed by opening the document using any computer in the Supreme Court".

Osbourne's colleague, Sheldon Graham, added that the new system was "200 times more convenient than using a manual system".
Graham, who has been using the JEMS for the past three years, remarked that in preparation for the software, the registry had been scanning documents on to a system using the portable document format. This was done in order to facilitate the electronic retrieval of files, and based on the efficiency of this system, Graham noted, the registry commenced the installation of the fully computerised system.

In addition to the new electronic system, Simmonds said a central area or vault had also been cleared for the storage of files. This room has been painted and tiled, and air-conditioning units have been installed to prevent disintegration of paper usually caused by exposure to excess heat.
"We are ready now to remove the files from the registry into this room. Files that are not required for immediate use will be sent to the archives," she said. Simmonds stressed that only persons who were assigned to those areas would have access to the files.

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