Justice Minister Delroy Chuck says the State’s ability to accurately determine the geographical distribution of justices of the peace (JPs) is being stymied as a number of them have not submitted their annual report for 2023.

“We’re trying to ensure that they still reside, not only in Jamaica but in the parishes in which they are supposed to be serving. The need for the annual return is to give an indication or an update of their residential status so that if they have moved from, say, St James to Kingston, then they should really transfer their commissioning to the custos in the parish in which they are now residing,” Chuck told the Jamaica Observer after an advertisement reminding JPs of the requirement appeared in the Observer last Wednesday.

The advertisement noted that Section 7 (2) of the Justices of the Peace Act, 2018, requires all JPs to submit a report to the office of their custos rotulorum by January 31.

The report “also allows the custodees to be able to monitor the number of JPs that they have in the different parishes. So the ministry and the custodees can map out where we have JPs across the island and, if necessary, to invite persons in areas underserved to become JPs,” Chuck explained, urging JPs to complete the report.

“It doesn’t take a minute to put in the information. So, if they just download the file from the website, it’s just a question of putting in their name and minimal information. It can be done within two minutes,” said Chuck.

The justice minister also said that some JPs have migrated without informing their custodees, who have not been able to get in touch with them, posing another challenge for the justice ministry.

“Those who have migrated, we want them to leave the seal with the custos if they have migrated permanently, or leave it with the custos if they are going to be going away for longer than a year, because these seals, we cannot afford for them to remain unattended for any lengthy period of time,” said Chuck.

“If they have migrated, for example, and the seal is left unattended with a friend, that seal could be used fraudulently and that is why we’re trying to make sure that all the JPs reside in the parish or in the island and are therefore in the protection of their seal,” he explained.

A check is currently under way in each parish to identify those who have migrated without notice and recover their seal, said the minister.

Additionally, he said the ministry is trying to identify JPs who have passed.

“Some have died, so we need to remove them from the list of JPs. In that sense, we ask within the parishes, and we also ask the families to notify us if the JPs have died so we can recover the seal,” he said.