Restorative justice not designed to clear court backlog, says expert
A RESTORATIVE justice expert has said that a suggestion by Opposition spokesperson on justice, Donna Scott-Mottley, to focus on alternative methods of justice as a way of reducing the caseload in the nation’s courts cannot work in isolation.
Commenting on the ScottMottley’s suggestion, Dr Jermaine McCalpin, chair of the African and African-American studies at New Jersey City University, said that restorative justice is only one approach to achieving justice.
“Restorative justice isn’t designed as a mechanism to clear case backlog. It is an approach to justice. So while we often articulate this idea that it will ameliorate the backlog of cases in the current justice system, it will require far more than just restorative justice just to clear backlog. Restorative justice is an approach to justice, not a court management system. That’s what would clear caseload,” said McCalpin, who is a Jamaican.
He told The Gleaner that in order for restorative justice to be effective, it will have to be initiated before cases go before the court.
“It is a culture that we have not yet as a country properly assimilated into, because you can’t talk about restorative justice only functioning at the judiciary, it has to function at the level of the people, and we may have less cases if we have restorative justice at the community level. Other jurisdictions that have used restorative justice have not used it in the way that we are now,” McCalpin said.
PLANS FOR JUSTICE SYSTEM
At a Gleaner Editors’ Forum recently at the newspaper’s offices, downtown Kingston, Scott-Mottley outlined her plans for the justice system if the People’s National Party were to win the next general election.
“First of all, you have to look at the court system and how it functions, because the long delays in having cases heard, although there has been somewhat of an improvement, it’s a deterrent. That’s why sometimes people take matters into their own hands. We will have to look at the level of frustration with waiting for five years for an important matter to be litigated,” Scott-Mottley said.
She added: “Because of my nature and personality, and I think everybody brings that to whatever portfolio they hold, I also would try to encourage alternative methods of resolving, so the dispute resolution, the restorative justice and so on would be something that I would definitely want to focus on.”