Chief justice defends judiciary against Rais criticism

comments     Arfaeza A Aziz     Published     Updated

For the second time within a week, Chief Justice Mohd Dzaiddin Abdullah refuted criticisms by de facto Law Minister Dr Rais Yatim on the efficiency of the judiciary.

In a media statement today, Dzaiddin dismissed Rais' allegation that the court has been slow in disposing juveniles cases, resulting in the accused individuals being incarcerated for long periods.

In his bid to set the record straight, Dzaiddin claimed statistics show that the measures taken by the judiciary in processing juvenile cases have been successful.

The chief justice said in the statement, which was distributed to the press by his special officer Sabirin Jaafar, that the judiciary had given priority to all juveniles in remand, and the courts have been effective in reducing the number of juveniles being held as well as shortening their detention period.

He said there are only 186 juveniles currently being remanded.

"This is a mere fraction, in fact only 3.83 percent of the total number of juvenile cases is pending, This low percentage reflects that the measures taken by the judiciary have been successful," he said.

Dzaiddin added that in West Malaysia, the court no longer sent juveniles to be remanded in prisons as the current practice is to send them to any available probation hostels like Sekolah Tunas Bakti situated in Sungai Besi, Kuala Lumpur.

"However in East Malaysia, juveniles are still being remanded in prisons for lack of available alternative places of detention," he said.

Isolated case

Last Thursday, Dzaiddin called for a press conference to deny Rais' contention that the magistrates' court was facing problems in disposing its civil cases.

The chief justice today also refuted Rais'(photo) claim that there are juveniles being remanded for as long as three to four years.

"The average period of remand is less than six months and nowhere near the period of three to four years as mentioned by the honourable minister [Rais]," he said.

Listing out the juvenile cases in the country, he said the current period of detention in Kuala Lumpur, Perak, Pahang and Terengganu is between one to six months while in Perlis and Kelantan, it is between one and three months.

"In busier courts like in Johor where there are 40 juveniles being remanded, the period of remand is between one and six months except for one isolated case where the juvenile had been remanded for 21 months," he said.

Meanwhile, in Sabah and Sarawak, there is one juvenile respectively being remanded for almost a year, he added.

Trial process

The chief justice added that a case can be normally disposed within three months if a juvenile pleads guilty to his charge but if otherwise, the trial process will be slightly longer as there are several provisions that the court needs to comply with.

While Dzaiddin did not dispute the Human Rights Commission's (Suhakam) report that 1,714 young prisoners are being remanded as of October last year, he nevertheless expressed concern with the definition of juveniles and pointed out that the Juvenile Courts Act 1947 defined juveniles as "persons below the age of 18" while young prisoners are those who are below 21.

This is the first time the judiciary had made a comprehensive response on juveniles' being remanded in the country's prisons after the issue made news headlines in late 1998.



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