FREETOWN, Sierra Leone, 25th August, 2023: The Judiciary of Sierra Leone wishes to inform the general public that the third edition of the ACCESS TO JUSTICE THROUGH JUDICIAL WEEK which is aimed at increasing access to justice and decongesting Correctional Centres across the country will commence on Monday, 28thAugust, and end on Friday, 8th September 2023.
To achieve this, the Honourable Chief Justice has assigned twenty-three (23) Judges across the country to deal with 802 cases. Out of this number, 441 are in Freetown and 361 cases in the provinces.
These offences include murder, robbery with aggravation, sexual offences, manslaughter, shop breaking, house breaking, office breaking, wounding, larceny, burglary, malicious damage, child stealing, assault, embezzlement and fraudulent conversion among others.
Part of the total number of cases to be handled includes 189 cases for which the accused and victims have not been traced. Of that number, 85 of them are sexual offences. The no-trace cases are cases in which the accused persons were admitted to bail with no trace of them or their sureties or the victims have compromised or abandoned the case.
As part of the Judiciary’s commitment to enhance access to justice, accused persons will have the opportunity to be heard by the assigned judges with a view to bringing an end to their cases, and/or incarceration where they are trial inmates.
“Our responsibility is timely delivery of justice with speedy completion of all cases before our Courts. Despite the administrative challenges and bottlenecks, the Judiciary must find ways to mete out justice to those that fall foul of the law” said the Honourable Chief Justice, His Lordship Justice Desmond Babatunde Edwards, adding that, “this Access to Justice Through Judicial Week is created as an alternative remedy to look into and deal with all cases which have stalled for one reason or the other. The aim of the exercise, apart from decongesting Correctional Centres, is to clear backlog of cases which are being created mainly due to the absence of accused persons or the absence of witnesses couple with the heavy case load of Judges due to the high Judge-to-population ratio, which though significantly improved, is still high. We thank the UNDP for helping the Government to support this process.”
For more enquiries, contact the Judiciary Communications on +23234617548/ +23279101086 or visit us on www.judiciary.gov.sl or our social media platforms.