PM pledges faster and more accessible justice

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says her Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue sup­port­ing mea­sures aimed at mak­ing the jus­tice sys­tem faster, more ef­fi­cient and more ac­ces­si­ble to cit­i­zens.

In a mes­sage mark­ing the open­ing of the 2026–2027 Law Term of the Supreme Court of Ju­di­ca­ture, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Ex­ec­u­tive was ready to sup­port ini­tia­tives to im­prove the de­liv­ery of jus­tice.

“Jus­tice must nev­er be dis­tant from the peo­ple. It must nev­er be be­yond the reach of the or­di­nary cit­i­zen,” she said.

The Prime Min­is­ter said since tak­ing of­fice in April 2025, her Gov­ern­ment had been work­ing with stake­hold­ers across the jus­tice sys­tem to iden­ti­fy ob­sta­cles to ef­fi­cien­cy and im­prove the de­liv­ery of ser­vices.

She point­ed to sev­er­al leg­isla­tive mea­sures, in­clud­ing leg­is­la­tion to digi­tise the na­tion’s laws and make them avail­able through a sin­gle on­line por­tal.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the move would make the law more ac­ces­si­ble to cit­i­zens and help strength­en con­fi­dence in the jus­tice sys­tem.

The Gov­ern­ment al­so passed the Civ­il Di­vi­sion Act, No. 5 of 2026, which she said was in­tend­ed to ad­dress sys­temic weak­ness­es in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of civ­il jus­tice, in­clud­ing staffing and ad­min­is­tra­tive chal­lenges.

The leg­is­la­tion is al­so aimed at tack­ling de­lays and back­logs, es­tab­lish­ing spe­cialised sub­di­vi­sions and im­prov­ing op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy.

On crime and bail, Per­sad-Bisses­sar point­ed to the Bail (Amend­ment) Act 2026, No. 10 of 2026, which in­tro­duced Bail Source Hear­ings.

The hear­ings al­low the courts to de­ter­mine whether cash or re­al prop­er­ty be­ing used to post or se­cure bail was ob­tained through le­git­i­mate means.

She said the mea­sure formed part of the Gov­ern­ment’s wider ef­forts to tack­le or­gan­ised crime, mon­ey laun­der­ing and oth­er se­ri­ous crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so high­light­ed amend­ments to pro­ba­tion leg­is­la­tion, say­ing the Pro­ba­tion of Of­fend­ers (Amend­ment) Act 2026 mod­ernised leg­is­la­tion dat­ing back to 1947 and gave the Ju­di­cia­ry greater scope to use split sen­tenc­ing.

Un­der the ap­proach, pe­ri­ods of in­car­cer­a­tion can be com­bined with su­per­vised pro­ba­tion, in­clud­ing elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing, cur­fews, com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice and vo­ca­tion­al train­ing.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Gov­ern­ment would con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the Ju­di­cia­ry with re­sources to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy.

She al­so wel­comed the re­open­ing of Mag­is­trates’ Courts through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go, say­ing the Gov­ern­ment had pro­vid­ed the nec­es­sary re­sources.

She used Ma­yaro as an ex­am­ple of the dif­fi­cul­ties cit­i­zens pre­vi­ous­ly faced when ac­cess­ing pro­ba­tion ser­vices, with some peo­ple hav­ing to trav­el to San Fer­nan­do be­cause pro­ba­tion of­fi­cers did not have des­ig­nat­ed work­ing spaces at Mag­is­trates’ Courts in their ju­ris­dic­tions.

“Jus­tice must not de­pend up­on where you live,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She said pro­ba­tion of­fi­cers would now be able to re­sume op­er­a­tions with­in the re­spec­tive courts in their ar­eas fol­low­ing the re­open­ing.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so linked the open­ing of the new Law Term to the start of the new school term, say­ing about 777 schools re­opened on Mon­day.

She said the Gov­ern­ment would con­tin­ue work­ing to erad­i­cate school vi­o­lence and, where nec­es­sary, work with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and oth­er stake­hold­ers to pro­tect stu­dents, teach­ers and school com­mu­ni­ties.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her Gov­ern­ment was “re­build­ing”, “mod­ernising” and “strength­en­ing” in­sti­tu­tions while work­ing to re­store con­fi­dence in the rule of law.

She al­so reaf­firmed the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to re­spect­ing and em­pow­er­ing an in­de­pen­dent Ju­di­cia­ry.

“The work be­fore us is sig­nif­i­cant, but so too is our de­ter­mi­na­tion,” she said.