PRESIDENT David Granger’s book – The magistracy and the community: Easier access to justice for everyone everywhere – explains the essential service which magistrates’ courts provide. It makes a compelling case for enhancing the connection between the country’s communities and citizens and the criminal justice system.

This connection is not always obvious to citizens who have cause to visit a magistrate’s court. This level of court is often a citizen’s first contact with his or her country’s justice system. The experience could be intimidating and exasperating. Citizens may often have to make multiple visits to the court in order to secure justice. Attending court may incur expense and involve extensive travel over long distances.

Magistrates’ Courts are tasked with criminal jurisdiction for minor and non-indictable serious offences and preliminary enquires of indictable offences. They hear claims, also, to determine cases relating to possession and rental of premises, for the recovery of petty debts and the maintenance and support of children and women. The system could be overwhelmed by sloth and encumbered by a backlog of cases.

The Modernisation of Justice Improvement Programme, unearthed serious deficiencies in the country’s magistracy in its 2006 review. It found that:

Access to justice –understood as the ability of people to exercise their rights or resolve their disputes through the justice system, without distinction based on ethnicity, race, gender, or socioeconomic condition– remains a challenge in Guyana.

Access to justice is a benchmark of democratic governance, a necessity for equality before the law and a foundational principle of human rights law. Countries seeking to enhance access to justice have been inclined to place greater emphasis on ensuring systems of legal aid and on instituting alternative dispute settlements.

President David Granger has a more holistic understanding of the concept. The Guyanese President undertakes a dissection of the concept in this book. He argues, convincingly, that equality before the law can exist only where all citizens, regardless of place of residence, have access to the law, its benefits and its protection.

Access to justice for him is not merely a legal concept but one which can enhance citizens’ rights, ensure their participation in society, assure them of justice and improve the country’s economic environment. He goes on to assert that the right of every person to be heard in a court of summary jurisdiction is a basic right.

The State, for him, has an obligation to facilitate access to justice, including ensuring that no citizen has to travel long distances in order to access legal services. Access to justice, from this perspective, is meaningful only to the extent that citizens can access the legal services of the courts, regardless of where they live.

Guyana’s geography, topography and demography, however, present special challenges for access to justice. Hinterland communities are often remote and located far from the administrative centres which provide such legal services.

An entrepreneur interested in establishing a business in Lethem in the Rupununi Region, for example, has had to make a 500 kilometres journey overland, by road and then by river in order to have the business registered in Anna Regina or Suddie in the Pomeroon-Supenaam Region. A person residing in Kwakwani in the Upper Demerara-Upper Berbice Region, similarly, would have had to travel more than 200 km to access certain legal services in New Amsterdam in the East Berbice-Corentyne.

Guyana’s judiciary is independent under the country’s Constitution. It initiated projects to expand the number of magisterial districts and courts, prior to President David Granger’s assumption to the Presidency in 2015. The President committed his government’s continued support for efforts to extend access to justice across the country.

President Granger was invited to address the opening of new court houses and the launching of new magisterial districts – at Diamond-Golden Grove, Lethem and Linden. These events afforded him the opportunity to emphasise the importance of access to justice as a central pillar in his country’s justice administration policy.

The construction of new magistrates’ courts and the establishment of additional magisterial districts, however, have their limitations. It will not be practical to construct enough courts to ensure that citizens would not have to travel long distances. Guyana is not alone in grappling with this problem. The justice administration, like most sectors, is subject to the iron law of scarce resources.

Technology is providing a solution. Many countries are offering online legal services and remote access to justice. Guyana’s provincial justice system, still characterised by face-to-face contact and the longhand recording of evidence, needs the injection of technology to make the system more efficient and accessible. Technology has a pivotal role to play in promoting access to justice. The use of technology to promote access to justice is a surprising oversight of this book.

President David Granger’s support for expanding access to justice represents a significant paradigm shift in the country’s legal system. It will guarantee greater respect for citizen’s rights but will make the magistracy less intimidating and impersonal for the average citizen.

The magistracy and the community: Easier access to justice for everyone, everywhere is a perceptive work which lays the foundation for reshaping the face of Guyana’s justice system.