Editorial | Fix court stenographer crisis

Having spearheaded a sharp reduction in the backlog in Jamaica’s courts, Chief Justice Bryan Sykes is likely to be worried that his efforts could be undone because of the inadequacy and/or insufficiency of tools to maintain the job.

A shortage of court reporters, apparently, is an acute problem. So, fixing it should be a priority for the Government.

On Monday, this newspaper highlighted a case that took eight years for a judge to deliver his ruling, in part, he said, because a voice-to-text recording system that was being piloted in the courts did not work well.

With that system, note-takers were absent from courtrooms and the parties, including judges, who, outside of their written notes, relied on the audio feed for verbatim information of what transpired at the trial. Presumably, specific segments of the recording could be played back if anyone needed real-time confirmation or clarity on what someone said.

“Aspects of the project did not live up to expectations, which contributed to the inordinate delay in the delivery of this judgment,” Justice Leighton Pusey said in a judgment on the matter in which a motorist sued the Transport Authority, claiming that the agency had improperly seized and impounded his vehicle in 2015.

“The court regrets this inordinate delay and sincerely apologises to the parties…,” he added.

It is not clear what is the status of that project, whose aim, according to the former chief justice, Zaila McCalla, was to improve the administration and delivery of justice by making everyone in the system more efficient.

Concomitant with that project should have been the training of more court reporters, the stenographers who record, in written form, everything said during hearings. The two systems, apparently, would coexist until, presumably, the digital technology was settled, becoming the principal means of documenting and accessing court records.

COURT STENOGRAPHERS STILL IN DEMAND

It is not clear what eventually happened to the pilot project, or the extent to which speech-to-text technology is used in the island’s courts. Justice Pusey did not say. And there has been no publicly delivered assessment of the outcome. It is still not too late for that to happen.

What is known, however, is that court stenographers are still in demand – and that they are in short supply. And that those who remain complain of being overworked and underpaid.

Just days before The Gleaner ’s reporting of Justice Pusey’s remarks about what contributed to his delayed ruling, it noted several concerns of court reporters, of whom there are 24 against what should be a complement of 45. Stenographers, therefore, have been doubling up on work, with only one, instead of two, generally available to courtrooms, which has limited the capacity of the reporters to relieve each other during lengthy sittings. Because of this, some court sessions have recently been shortened or abandoned, and there are fears that the problem could worsen.

Low pay, the court reporters claim, have pushed many of them out of the court system, which has been compounded, over the past decade, by the lack of training of new staff.

Apparently, a court stenographer’s courses are expensive and difficult. A reporter is expected to accurately write upwards of 180 words a minute on stenotype machines. So, with the Government not paying for training, people are reluctant to risk the investment.

Obviously, adopting new technology in the courts is inevitable. But having human stenographers, at least into the medium term, and perhaps beyond, is necessary. Machines, even digital ones, sometimes malfunction, thus requiring human intervention.

PUT THINGS IN PLACE

But Jamaica’s circumstance makes the matter far more prosaic than that. Court reporters are required to help keep the clichéd wheels of justice spinning – even at a time when they are in substantially better shape than in the recent past.

Recently, Chief Justice Sykes, who has pledged to bring Jamaica’s court system to world-class efficiency standards, reported that the island’s parish courts had effectively cleared their backlog. They were clearing nearly as many, or more, cases each year than are filed. Only 1.37 per cent of active cases in the criminal division of these courts were backlogged. Seventy-seven per cent of the cases are now being cleared in under a year, where, a few years ago, the average was 15 months.

At the Supreme Court, where more serious and complex cases are generally heard, the clearance rate is 75 per cent. And the court appears on track, within a few years, to dispose of cases within two years.

That is good. For the best justice is one that is not only sure, but delivered within ‘reasonable time’. But it will not happen merely by Justice Sykes and/or the president of the Court of Appeal, Patrick Brooks, exhorting judges to work harder and more efficiently. Other things have to be in place to assist them – including digital recording systems, if they work, and stenographers who record the proceedings in text if, and where, these digital systems are not available.

The courts, evidenced by several recent rulings in the Court of Appeal, are becoming increasingly sensitive to their responsibility to deliver justice in a timely manner, as is guaranteed by the Constitution. The Government should help them to fulfil this obligation. Ensuring that stenographers are available is one way.