Government Hoards Legal Aid Funds While Poor Jamaicans Forfeit Their Rights, MP Jess Warns

Ninety per cent of all legal aid requests received by the Legal Aid Council are for civil matters, yet the Government continues to restrict legal aid almost exclusively to criminal cases, Opposition Spokesperson on Justice Zuleika Jess revealed during her sectoral contribution in Parliament on Wednesday. More damningly, the Minister of Justice publicly admitted during the Standing Finance Committee that the Ministry has the fiscal space to expand coverage but has chosen not to act.

Jess cited the Chief Justice's Civil Division Statistics Report, which records more than 16,000 new civil cases filed in Parish Courts every year, with at least one party unrepresented in up to 70 per cent of those disputes. The majority of civil legal aid requests are from victims of domestic abuse seeking divorce. She described the Government's refusal to act as a betrayal of the poor and a choice, not a resource constraint.

"The money is sitting in the treasury. The Minister has publicly confessed that the fiscal space exists. Yet this administration lets those funds sit idle while poor Jamaicans are crushed by legal fees or forced to forfeit their rights. Access to justice cannot be a half-measure." stated Zuleika Jess, MP, Opposition Spokesperson on Justice.

She also called for the urgent amendment of the Firearms (Prohibition Restriction and Regulation) Act, after a music producer was sentenced to a mandatory minimum of fifteen years for possessing imitation firearms used as props in music videos. She noted that state prosecutors and defence attorneys had reached the rare position of standing together in agreement that the law is unjust, and that government forensic resources had been expended conducting ballistics tests on a cardboard cutout of a firearm.

She called on Parliament to restore full sentencing discretion to judges and to apply any amendments retroactively so that those currently imprisoned under the legislation can have their sentences reviewed.

Source: People's National Party press release.