DPP warns staffing crisis threatens new criminal courts

The Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (ODPP) says it is cur­rent­ly un­able to as­sign pros­e­cu­tors to new­ly planned crim­i­nal courts due to acute staffing short­ages and ex­ist­ing work­load pres­sures.

In a let­ter dat­ed April 30, 2026, ad­dressed to the Act­ing Reg­is­trar and Mar­shal of the Supreme Court of Ju­di­ca­ture, the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions re­spond­ed to plans to as­sign three to four ad­di­tion­al judges to the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion of the High Court from ear­ly May 2026, aimed at ad­dress­ing the back­log of crim­i­nal mat­ters.

The ODPP said that while it re­mains com­mit­ted to the ef­fi­cient ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice, it does not have the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al ca­pac­i­ty to staff the ad­di­tion­al courts.

It point­ed to sig­nif­i­cant staff deficits, in­clud­ing va­cant se­nior po­si­tions such as Deputy Di­rec­tor roles, and lim­it­ed num­bers of As­sis­tant Di­rec­tors cur­rent­ly in post. It al­so not­ed that sev­er­al se­nior of­fi­cers had re­cent­ly been pro­mot­ed to the ju­di­cia­ry, fur­ther re­duc­ing avail­able re­sources.

Ac­cord­ing to the let­ter, pros­e­cu­tors not as­signed to as­size courts are al­ready han­dling heavy case­loads across mul­ti­ple ju­ris­dic­tions, in­clud­ing Dis­trict Courts, Mas­ters Courts, Chil­dren’s Courts and Bail Courts, with each at­tor­ney man­ag­ing more than 70 mat­ters and ap­pear­ing in court dai­ly.

The ODPP said as­sign­ing staff to ad­di­tion­al courts would risk un­der­min­ing the qual­i­ty and time­li­ness of pros­e­cu­tions, de­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as “un­work­able”.

It al­so high­light­ed com­pet­ing de­mands aris­ing from fast track court mat­ters, cap­i­tal and non-cap­i­tal bail ap­pli­ca­tions, and new ju­di­cial arrange­ments, which fur­ther strain its lim­it­ed work­force.

The of­fice ref­er­enced the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act, not­ing strict fil­ing dead­lines for in­dict­ments that must be met dai­ly, warn­ing that fail­ure to com­ply could af­fect the ef­fec­tive­ness of re­cent ju­di­cial re­forms.

The let­ter al­so stat­ed that the ODPP does not con­trol its re­cruit­ment process, which falls un­der the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. It said that even where re­cruit­ment is un­der­way, new of­fi­cers re­quire train­ing be­fore han­dling se­ri­ous crim­i­nal mat­ters.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the ODPP raised con­cerns about op­er­a­tional chal­lenges caused by mul­ti­ple mas­ters be­ing as­signed to a sin­gle High Court judge, which it said cre­ates sched­ul­ing con­flicts for pros­e­cu­tors.

It al­so main­tained that at least two pros­e­cu­tors are re­quired per High Court judge to ef­fec­tive­ly man­age tri­als and case man­age­ment con­fer­ences.

The DPP fur­ther not­ed con­cerns about di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween new­ly ap­point­ed judges’ teams and in­di­vid­ual pros­e­cu­tors, say­ing such con­tact should be chan­nelled through the In­dict­ment De­part­ment to avoid in­con­sis­ten­cy and pres­sure on coun­sel.

Be­yond staffing, the ODPP said it al­so faces short­ages in ad­min­is­tra­tive and cler­i­cal sup­port, as well as in­ad­e­quate phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture to meet grow­ing op­er­a­tional de­mands.

It con­clud­ed that while it sup­ports ef­forts to re­duce the crim­i­nal case back­log, ex­pan­sion of the ju­di­cia­ry must be matched with par­al­lel in­vest­ment in pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al and ad­min­is­tra­tive re­sources.

The of­fice said it re­mains open to con­tin­ued di­a­logue with the Ju­di­cia­ry and stake­hold­ers to iden­ti­fy in­ter­im mea­sures to man­age the sit­u­a­tion.