Senate passes Act to abolish Preliminary Enquiries

The Jamaican Senate on Friday passed the Committal Proceedings Act, a piece of legislation, which will eliminate preliminary enquiries in the court system.  Preliminary enquiries will be replaced by what is known as committal proceedings, which will be carried out by a magistrate.

    

Under the process of the committal proceedings, a magistrate examines witness statements collected by the police and decide whether a case is to go to trial. The rationale behind this is to speed up the way cases proceed through the courts.

    
During the debate on the bill, Senator KD Knight, a former Minister of Justice, himself, questioned whether there will be an increase in the number of judges available in the High Court to preside over the added caseload at that level, arising from the quicker processing of cases at the lower level.

   
Justice Minister Mark Golding, in response, confirmed that there was a plan to increase the number of judges "...at the level of the Supreme Court but also the Court of Appeal."

It was a "multi-faceted series of things" that were being done, he said, to improve the justice system, adding that the number of courtrooms was also being increased.

   
Senator Golding also said his ministry had knowledge of the extent of the backlog of cases in each parish, based on monthly reports from  Resident Magistrates.
 

The committal proceedings bill was passed in the upper house with 21 amendments. The Bill now goes to the House of Repersentatives for its further consideration and passage.

     
Preliminary enquires have been abandoned by many jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom where it originated.