Gov't welcomes new plea agreement policy to ease court backlog

The Gov­ern­ment has wel­comed the launch of the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Pol­i­cy on Plea Dis­cus­sions and Plea Agree­ments, de­scrib­ing it as an im­por­tant step to­wards strength­en­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and re­duc­ing the back­log of crim­i­nal cas­es.

The pol­i­cy, ac­com­pa­nied by Stan­dard Op­er­at­ing Pro­ce­dures (SOPs), was of­fi­cial­ly launched at a train­ing work­shop at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre on Tues­day.

Min­is­ter of Jus­tice and Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al De­vesh Ma­haraj de­liv­ered re­marks on be­half of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, SC, at the event, which was held in part­ner­ship with the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) and fund­ed by the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU).