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Prisons Commissioner Gerard Wilson says he welcomes the recently introduced initiative where inmates on remand can get the opportunity to know their possible maximum sentence ahead of the actual sentencing.
Speaking to Guardian Media yesterday, Wilson dismissed reports that prison officers had been touting for the judiciary with the introduction of the programme which provides a prisoner with the opportunity to engage the court during a Maximum Sentence Indicator hearing, part of the programme which seeks to fast-track criminal cases.
“It’s voluntary. All we do is provide them with the information and they will call an officer and tell the officer that they want to go through the process. When they go to the court their lawyer will go with them and they are given the opportunity to reconsider. The judge will again ask them again whether they want to go through the process and they will willingly say yes or no. So it is erroneous for anybody to feel that we are forcing inmates to plead guilty that is not a fact,” Wilson said.
The Prisons Commissioner said it was the “right” of the inmate to plead guilty or not “and come out of the system.”
He said the idea behind the initiative “is if a person is incarcerated for seven or eight years and the maximum penalty for the crime they committed is ten years, and they plead guilty, it means they just have a year or something to do and they go home. But that is entirely up to them.”
There are currently 1,100 inmates in the remand and Wilson said it is a “welcome initiative.”
“If you speak with inmates who have been in the system, we don’t have the best facilities here. We speak about over-crowding and the facilities, so it is a way to assist with dealing with the problem.”
He said it was a surprise to him to hear negative comments.
“We have been clamouring all the time, talking about the overcrowding, the length of time the judicial process takes and now that there is a system in place to help with that you hear somebody saying something else.”
Wilson could provide no figures on how many prisoners have actually “voluntarily” agreed to be part of the MSI but he said “all I know is that the process is going well. I know that I spoke with Justice (Gillian) Lucky, who is the person adjudicating the process, and she told me that things are proceeding quite nicely,” he said.
The Prisons Commissioner said while the initiative “has the potential to reduce the number of inmates in the remand yard, it all depends on how many persons will be willing to plead guilty.” In the past week, he said, he was aware that two inmates had indicated that they wanted to plead guilty.
He said once they voluntarily agree to plead guilty, the information is sent to the High Court registrar and “they will send a list for us for the date the prisoner will appear. It appears to me there is a special hearing for them and those matters will be heard on specific days,” Wilson said.
Some inmates who had agreed to plead guilty had already gone before Justice Lucky and “there is another date coming not too far from now when we will go before the Judge again,” Wilson said.
On July 12 and July 17, Justice Lucky at MSI hearings informed counsel that “this court is not going to move forward unless someone is represented for whatever kind of matter it may be.”
In a release to the media yesterday, the Judiciary contended that “persons have not been or will not be pressured to plead guilty,” but will be given the opportunity at the hearing at which a judge gives an accused person an indication of the maximum sentence which they would face if they plead guilty.
According to the Judiciary, the process is “voluntary,” with a “strict adherence to due process.”
It explained that the MSI was structured to ensure that justice is served in a more efficient manner, with the aim of reducing the backlog.