DIRECTOR of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Paula Llewellyn says her office will be making an appeal to the ministries of finance and justice for the hiring of a dedicated staff of paralegals in response to concerns about the absence of a sustained mechanism to keep witnesses and victims of crime informed of developments in their cases.

Llewellyn made the commitment during a recent forum put on by the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social & Economic Studies (SALISES) of The University of the West Indies, Mona, to explore the possibilities for a national victim information and notification system (NVINS) to give real-time advisories to parties about critical developments in criminal matters.

The tool, which exists in several jurisdictions outside Jamaica, typically notifies victims of crimes about court dates, bail decisions, parole status, and any changes in the offender’s location or release from custody. The information is confidential, free, and available 24 hours a day.

A NVINS was the focus of a 2019 Witness Care Conference by SALISES which yielded several recommendations focused on the need to develop capacity to implement and sustain the system.

Supreme Court judge Justice Vinette Graham-Allen — who is the judge in charge of the case management court which ensures that matters are properly prepared before being sent to trial — told the forum that in multiple instances witnesses and victims do not turn up for court because they had not been informed.

“This is what I have found, victims do not attend, or their witnesses, because they are not kept informed of the outcome of the case on each and every occasion that it comes before the court. So, naturally, what you find is that because they do not know the developments, nobody tells them. When the police go to find them at the last known address or telephone number, no answer, because that is not being done,” she told the forum.

In response, Llewellyn conceded that there was room for improvement as she argued that the challenges faced by prosecutors and the single witness care officer employed by her office to keep track of witnesses were more than what appeared on the surface.

“I have listened with interest to what has been said and at the risk of rocking the boat in the midst of all this academia there is an elephant in the room that we certainly as prosecutors have to wrestle with, and that’s the question of the reluctant witness. When we do get them to speak we have to use a lot of moral suasion as prosecutors and you try to identify why they are opting out of the programme,” said Llewellyn.

“Certainly, if we have the e-mail and phone numbers, we try to use that to engage the witnesses, but you do have a number of them opting out of the process, they change their numbers, they change their addresses and you do have the odd one who will take payment to look the other way and give the accused a bly, even relatives of victims,” added the DPP .

She said police investigators who are the “eyes and ears” of her office on the street, “themselves are at times overwhelmed” and under-resourced in the effort to keep witnesses and victims engaged and informed.

“You may not know, a lot of our detectives, or police investigators, they are not given data or credit on their phones to be able to keep in touch with the witnesses; it is through their own private efforts, so it’s their money they very often have to use to connect with witnesses.

“We would really need about 15 paralegals, or case workers, to do that sort of work, that is one for the future. In the short term, we will have to see if we can craft a justification to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Justice to get more posts on our establishment as it relates to even another five or six persons so that with the digitisation of our records we will be able to have our witness care officers constantly connecting to our witnesses,” Llewellyn said.

In the meantime, the DPP proposed the development of a victim charter or policy which, she said, can be shared through a public education drive.

“Some Jamaicans are very culturally closed; you have the elephant in the room of the ‘informer fi dead’, so we have to recognise this as part of the conversation,” she said.

Senior research fellow at SALISES Dr Dacia Leslie centred her comments on the recommendations of the 2019 witness care conference which, among other things, included considerations of a formal witness care network.

“The reality is that, with Jamaica having a murder rate in the vicinity of 52 per 100,000 population… there is no doubt that there is an urgent need to implement and formalise a victim notification system. We will need to give attention to mobilising financial or other resources.

“The elephant in the room, the need for about 15 witness care officers, which means need for resource allocation and sustainability measures to be put in place. The bottom line is, victims should have access to timely information regarding whether offenders are being released or just general information about their offenders actions, anything that will affect their safety,” Leslie said.

“Jamaica will need to develop the capacity to support the implementation and maintenance of a formalised victim notification system,” added Leslie.