11 August 2011

Case management in our courts under review.

| johnboy
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Justice And Community Safety are letting us know that he Hon Justice Hilary Penfold and Kathy Leigh, Director-General of the Justice & Community Safety Directorate are conducting a review of case management and listing procedures in the ACT Supreme Court.

To that end they’ve released a Discussion Paper and want your feedback on it by 19 September.

This has prompted the Liberals’ Vicki Dunne to declare our justice system to be in crisis.

“The latest failure to consult is the issues paper, announced today, proposing pre-trial disclosures in criminal cases.

“Pre-trial disclosures may very well be one solution, but it has been announced without proper consultation with the profession and it does not fix the immediate crisis in the Supreme Court.

Perhaps more importantly we learn from Vicki that the acting judges have ended their contracts and departed as there’s no budget to continue their work.

One does have to wonder though how a discussion paper asking for feedback can be taken to be a failure to consult.

UPDATE: Simon Corbell’s media release has arrived and outlines the key points:

— Reform to pre-trial criminal procedures including whether the prosecution and defence should share more information before appearing in court;
— better management of the courts lists to possibly have cases heard from start to finish by the one judge; and,
— improving criminal and civil procedures to ensure that settlement out of court is done at the earliest possible stage.

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What a joke, they have money to rebuild the supreme court house, but no money for extra judges, most of the time some of the court rooms are empty.

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