MONTEGO BAY, St James — Chief Justice Bryan Sykes has warned that stricter laws and harsher penalties will not necessarily be deterrents to crime in Jamaica.

According to Sykes, there is an urgent need for the steps between arrest and trial, which have been dogging the legal system, to be addressed.

Addressing the 91-year-old Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (MBCCI) Awards Banquet at the Montego Bay Convention Centre Saturday night, Sykes bemoaned that intermediate steps necessary to finish a trial within the prescribed two-year standard continue to plague the justice system.

As an example, Sykes pointed to the long time which the courts have to wait to access forensic reports.

“We’re also having an issue with forensic certificates, generally speaking, DNA analysis, and so on. So they take a long time, and as I understand it, the persons who do these things, their time begins when the exhibit is assigned, not when it gets to the lab — when it is assigned. So the question is: What happens if it’s not assigned for six months or seven months or eight months? It means nothing happens,” Sykes pointed out.

“So if you have a harsh law, with draconian penalties, and you are a career criminal, these things, whether you know the actual data are not, it will become apparent to you because you will be the person sitting in the cell somewhere, going to court every few weeks only to hear the report is not ready.

“And so they [criminals] are learning about the criminal justice system and its weaknesses. And what happens in the meantime? What about the witnesses who are waiting to give evidence? Some may want to migrate, some may want to go on farm work. Some may want to say, ‘I’ve been waiting so long for this case I need to get on with my life,’ ” added Sykes.

He noted that the protracted wait for trials also impacts the memory of the witnesses.

“So by the time they get up into the witness box, some two-plus years later — and I see a number of lawyers here — and when the witness can’t recall some detail, the witness is going to be accused of lying, making up stories and all sorts of things. And this is not the fault of the witnesses, it is because the intermediate steps take too long to be completed. And these problems are not new. They have been with us for at least a decade and counting,” noted Sykes.

He also bemoaned the long time it has been taking for the police to provide the court with results of examination from electronic devices seized from accused lotto scammers.

The chief justice highlighted that the long wait for the results of the examination of electronic devices led to the disposal of 57 such cases in the Trelawny Circuit Court.

“So what that means is this. When the police conduct their operations they collect the electronic devices, but here’s the problem, the electronic devices cannot be examined in time to meet the time standard. This is not a matter of criticism, it’s just a fact.

“So in the recent Easter Circuit, and that is June to July down to August, in Trelawny, 57 of those cases were disposed of without a trial or a plea because the reports concerning the examination of these devices was not available, and nobody could say when they would become available,” said Sykes.

“So the lotto scammers have now learned a simple thing. If I keep the information in electronic form on my smart phone, on my computer, on my laptop, chances are the matter won’t get to trial. So it means that if we’re going to be talking about the control of crime, we have to address those kinds of issues, because it does not really matter what the penalty for a crime is if the likelihood of being convicted is low, and that assumes that you will even get to trial.

“So I would want to suggest that in addition to looking at the laws and the penalties and so on, we have to resolve the question of what happens in the intermediate steps between arrests and trial. So that has to be addressed,” added Sykes as he pointed to statistics which show that there is only a 30 per cent conviction rate in the courts.

“The percentages, such as they are, should give us cause for thought. So what this really means then is that there’s a 70 per cent chance of an acquittal. Is that acceptable?” questioned the chief justice.

“And so this is why you find that persons will say that harsh penalties and draconian punishments, by themselves, can never ever reduce crime. So we’ll have to think about other things,” added Sykes.

In the meantime, president of the MBCCI, Oral Heaven, underscored that the “crime monster” is the major issue affecting the people of St James at this time.

“Crime continues to plague us and create increased operational costs for our businesses and rob us of our families, our friends, and of course, our workers,” said Heaven.

St James is currently under a state of public emergency (SOE), and Heaven noted that there are some people who have questioned the use of this measure to fight crime and its impact on businesses in the parish.

“Now, while we recognise the necessity of such actions, we must acknowledge the negative impact that crime has on our business community. The imposition of a second state of emergency is a reminder of the persistent challenges facing us here,” Heaven said.