BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, (CMC) – A three-day conference discussing criminal justice reform in the Caribbean will get underway in Barbados on October 18 amid concerns that the region’s criminal justice system is broken and not working.

“People recognise we are in a crisis situation, we do not want it to be a talk shop. We want to generate concrete recommendations in addressing the issue,” said Justice Winston Anderson, a judge with the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) and who also chairs the CCJ’s Academy for Law (CAL).

The CAL is staging its seventh biennial conference here under the theme “Criminal Justice Reform in the Caribbean – Achieving a Modern Criminal Justice System” with at least 200 delegates from throughout the Caribbean and the wider region in attendance.

According to CAL, the three-day event intends to “facilitate dynamic discussions and generate practical recommendations that will affect meaningful change in the criminal justice systems of the region”.

Among the topics for discussion include the importance of pre-trial proceedings, plea bargaining, crime and economic development, civil asset forfeiture, victims’ rights, anti-gang legislation, modern evidence-gathering techniques, judge-alone trials, and sentencing among others.

The Jamaican-born Anderson acknowledges the criminal justice system is broken both from the accused point of view and from the prosecution.

He makes reference to the lengthy delays in persons being brought to trial and in many instances having to remain on remand, effectively “being in prison”.

Anderson has welcomed the decision of countries in the Caribbean, including those who are not full members of the CCJ, to adopt the CCJ ruling that in cases where persons are convicted that the period on remand be subtracted from the overall jail term.

“We have come to normalise the intolerable,” he said, noting also that the judiciary is also part of the society and thereby also affected by crime.

“There is an alarming pandemic of serious crimes in the region. In accepting this state of affairs, we have normalised the intolerable and stunted economic development,” said Anderson, warning that if the Caribbean is to truly achieve sustainable economic and social development, then the issue of crime and criminality in the region cannot be tolerated and must be addressed.

“This can only be done using a multi-pronged approach, one such approach being the reform of the criminal justice system,” he added.