THE STARTLING bail figures disclosed in the Senate on Tuesday by the Government expose the paralysis of the criminal justice system.
Over a period of just six years, bail has been granted to 13,800 people on serious offences, including sexual offences, break-ins and gun offences.
The written answer supplied by Fitzgerald Hinds in response to a query from Dr Paul Richards also suggested the granting of bail has declined from a peak of 2,996 in 2021 to 2,186 last year.
The Minister of National Security further told the Independent senator the incarceration rate was such that over the same period there were 2,790 new remandees in 2018; 2,200 in 2019; 1,633 in 2020; 1,768 in 2021; 1,627 in 2022 and 2,454 in 2023. In other words, almost as many people have been put in jail as on bail.
Meanwhile, indictments are not keeping apace.
Asked about the impact of all these figures on prisons, Mr Hinds was unperturbed.
'From a historic standpoint, we were able to accommodate every one of them,' the minister claimed.
But if there are concerns too many people are accessing bail, there are equal concerns too few are.
Last year, in a brief to Parliament's committee on national security, the issue of pre-trial detention was raised by the Public Defenders' Department.
'There has been a significant increase in the number of people held on remand,' that document, dated May 2023, stated. 'Oftentimes, bail is not granted, or even if it is granted, accused people are unable to access bail and are left to wait until the date of their trial. The increasing remand population poses several challenges to the prison service.'
According to a 2022 US Department of State human rights report, cited in the same brief to the parliamentary committee, the conditions in some of the nine jails in this country continue to be harsh due to 'excessive overcrowding, inadequate sanitation, inadequate lighting and poor ventilation.' On average, five to nine prisoners occupy one cell, and in some cases share one bucket.
In most countries, bail is a judicial tool, not a political one, designed to balance the rights of the public, the accused and the victim.
Additionally, granting bail relieves the burden on the treasury by reducing the pressure to build and then maintain expensive prisons.
It should be remembered that only about half of the crimes committed in this country are reported. Even fewer are detected by the police. And even fewer seem to become indictments sent to trial.
Most people on bail will have to wait years, if not decades, before their cases are heard by a judge or jury. There would be less pressure to grant these people bail if we could have confidence in swift justice.
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