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Inexcusable delays are undermining trust in Hong Kong’s legal system
Grenville Cross calls for deadlines to be set and improved manpower allocation to speed things up, as public confidence in our institutions’ ability to deliver justice, once lost, may be hard to regain
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“Delay in justice is injustice”, said William Savage Landor. And a legal system bedevilled by delay, such as ours, inevitably suffers in various ways.
For example, although the Law Reform Commission’s subcommittee on the review of sexual offences produced some welcome recommendations this month – for the reform of the law concerning sexual offences to protect vulnerable people, some urgently needed – this took over 10 years, with the subcommittee having been originally appointed in April 2006.
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Again, following legal changes in Britain in 2004, another commission subcommittee was tasked in November 2006 with considering the pressing issue of whether a specific offence of causing or allowing the death of a child should be created. And yet, a decade on, its report is still awaited.
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Even after a subcommittee does finally report, additional delays are by no means uncommon. For example, although the commission subcommittee on hearsay evidence in criminal proceedings, first appointed in May 2001, reported in November 2009, its proposal – to relax the admissibility rules – is still under consideration, with no apparent end in sight.
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Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen Kwok-keung chairs the commission and, if people are to have faith in it, he must eradicate these delays. He might, for example, consider setting a two-year deadline for a subcommittee to report, with preliminary proposals required within a year.
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