It’s not a secret that the island’s justice system is being hobbled by a lack of resources. After all, this newspaper and other media houses have given a lot of ink and air time to the problems.

Myriad solutions have been advanced over the years and, to be fair to the authorities, some attempts have been made at improvements, particularly since the Jamaican Justice System Reform Task Force submitted its report in 2007.

However, as the Ministry of Justice has stated, while many reforms have been introduced in specific areas and other initiatives are currently under way… “these measures, for the most part, have been piecemeal rather than applied to the justice system as a whole”.

Therefore, it was not surprising to read last week’s lament by Justice Vivienne Harris, attorney Mr Linton Gordon, and Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Ms Maxine Jackson at the start of the current session of the St Ann Circuit Court.

Justice Harris pointed out that there are currently 35 judges in the Supreme Court and seven in the Court of Appeal, the same number since Jamaica gained Independence 54 years ago, although crime has increased.

“Judges have to share secretaries,” she said, and after working from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm each day, judges have to spend hours at night writing judgements.

No human being, we submit, can maintain such a punishing schedule and remain sharp for long.

Justice Harris also spoke to the heavy case backlog in the system, suggesting that “judges would be required to work perhaps 100 hours each day”, to make any significant dent in the number.

Justice Harris, we are told, spoke to these inadequacies after Mr Gordon argued that it was unfair to suggest that judges were not making an effort to reduce the number of cases before the courts.

“Fifty per cent of the courts in St Ann have been closed. Instead of taking justice to the citizens and make it available, they are withdrawing it,” he said as he pointed out that initially there were six courts in St Ann, but now only three are operational.

Ms Jackson, in her observations, stated that more judges and courts were needed. She pointed out that, with 101 cases before the circuit, the four weeks over which the current session will sit cannot put any significant dent to the list.

All of these deficiencies need to be addressed if we are serious about modernising the country’s justice system to make it, as the reform task force stated, “more efficient, accessible, accountable, fair and able to deliver timely results in a cost-effective manner”.

While we hold the view that there is still a high level of public confidence in the court system, the issue of the speed with which matters are resolved poses a threat to that confidence. And that, we fear, can only feed other negative perceptions of the justice system that, despite its challenges, can point to successes.

As such, it is imperative that the Justice System Reform Task Force recommendations that are still relevant today be given swift attention. Don’t let them sit on shelves as is the case with the reports of too many other task forces.