Our courts of justice have, over the years, become a hotbed of incomprehensible paradoxes and dead ends. In spite of sharply raising the legal court tariffs and registry fees to somehow discourage unwarranted and vexatious judicial litigations, the number of new cases has been on the increase.
In spite of introducing and encouraging the mechanism of alternative dispute resolution and the process of mediation, mandatory and voluntary, the uptake of both has been quite meagre and disappointing. In spite of the innumerable procedural and substantial law reforms aimed at reducing court delays, these delays have been growing longer and longer.
In spite of depenalising and decriminalising a good amount of criminal offences, criminal proceedings in our magistrates’ and superior courts are employing too long a time to be decided.
Notwithstanding that the complement of magistrates and judges has been increased over the years and even though our courts have gone digital to a large extent, our judiciary is miserably failing to cope with the heavy workload of criminal cases bogged down in archaic, unnecessary and bureaucratic criminal procedures that are still around us today.
Of course, coupled with all this, the fact that there are still innumerable human resources and logistics problems plaguing our justice system does not augur well for speeding up court proceedings.
Sometimes, it seems as though the paint peeling off the walls in the court corridors is moving faster than justice inside the halls themselves. Waiting has become the standard for hundreds of people involved in litigation. The slowdown in the meting out of justice and the delivery of judgments continues. Court hearings and sittings, which are supposed to start at 9am, are sometimes delayed past 10am.
Only a couple of cases are usually handled before it is time for the morning coffee break. A few more might be squeezed through before lunch. Meanwhile, many people who expect to have their day in court are sent home, some for the second or third time.
Judges, magistrates, prosecutors, advocates and all pertinent court personnel within the court services agency have long been pledging loyalty to the spirit of their work but insist there has to be a corresponding amount of pay provided. In the meantime, the people who are losing are the people on the streets. People are losing hope of ever obtaining justice for their righteous civil causes while others are getting off for their crimes and they end up right back in the streets with the public.
Going on to the Family Court, then, case delays appear to be at an all-time high. Case duration is close to having doubled, proceedings are not on a child-appropriate timescale, harm children and fuel family conflict. Efforts to address the backlogs seem to have failed. Perhaps the whole system needs to be redesigned. I have heard of more than one account of personal tragedy.
At the Family Court case delays appear to be at an all-time high- Mark Said
It is a tragedy for the plaintiff parents but, above all, it is a tragedy for the children in whose name the Family Courts sit. Such delays do not serve the best interests of children. They contribute to harm and result in children losing completely their relationships with much-loved parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, half-siblings and other family members and close friends who had close attachments with them. We could put media representatives with these parents to hear their accounts first-hand.
Waiting and hoping for things to get better is not an acceptable option as the family justice system lurches from dreadful to frightful. The scale of the crisis must not be underestimated with so many children caught up in wholly scandalous delays that harm children and fuel damaging family conflict, the cost to the parties and taxpayers.
Tinkering at the edges will not make a material difference. The process of family justice must be urgently reviewed and, in the meantime, action taken to remove incentives for vengeful, angry parents to game the system to the detriment of their children. These delays, fracture, often irreparably, a once loving relationship between a child and half of their family, leading to all too frequent lifetime trauma for the child.
The situation at the law courts has turned alarming at the same time that the Maltese judiciary recognises that the administration of justice cannot come to a grinding halt and that it needs to maintain continuous access to justice. Yet, it is struggling in adapting to means of keeping its processes and services running despite all sorts of problems.
Perhaps most of us have few dealings with our court system but erroneously take comfort in knowing that the wheels of justice are always turning, punishing the guilty and making whole those who have been wronged. Listen closely, however, and you will hear cries of distress, not only from defendants awaiting sentences and plaintiffs seeking to vindicate their legal rights but from the judiciary and administrators too across the board.
The mills of God, or the wheels of justice, might grind slowly, we are told, but they grind fine. Well, sometimes, admittedly very rarely, the wheels of Maltese justice seem to spin at a speed too fast for thought, without time, apparently, to add an ounce of compassion or common sense.
While some cases seem to speed to untenable, unthinkable conclusions, in others, the wheels of justice seem to have stopped grinding slowly and have simply ground to a halt.
Mark Said is a lawyer.