A brewing crisis in Trinidad and Tobago’s criminal justice system has come to light, with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) revealing it lacks the personnel to support the Judiciary’s planned expansion of the High Court’s Criminal Division, a initiative designed to tackle a years-long growing backlog of unresolved cases.
Director of Public Prosecutions Roger Gaspard laid out the agency’s crisis in an April 30 correspondence to acting Supreme Court Registrar Kimberly Prescott, a document later obtained by the Sunday Express. Gaspard’s response came two weeks after Prescott’s April 8 letter notified him that three additional High Court judges would begin taking on backlog cases in early May, requiring the ODPP to assign prosecutors to support the new courts. In his letter, Gaspard made clear that despite the ODPP’s unwavering commitment to upholding its constitutional mandate to support efficient criminal justice administration, the office simply does not have the staff capacity to take on this new responsibility.
Gaspard emphasized that the barrier is rooted in resource scarcity, not institutional resistance. “Our constraint is not one of unwillingness or recalcitrance, but rather of staff capacity,” he wrote, noting the ODPP has operated with extreme prosecutorial staffing deficits for an extended period.
The scope of the staffing crisis is substantial. Over the past three years alone, three Deputy Directors of Public Prosecutions and two Assistant Directors have been promoted to the Judiciary, leaving all three Deputy DPP positions completely vacant. Of the six approved Assistant DPP posts, only three are currently filled, with just two new hires having been made recently. While recruitment efforts fall under the purview of the Judicial and Legal Service Commission (JLSC) and the Attorney General’s Office, Gaspard reported that hiring progress has glacial at best. Even after vacancies are advertised, he noted, there is no clear timeline for when new appointments will be finalized.
Even when new prosecutors are hired, Gaspard explained, they cannot be immediately deployed to high-stakes criminal cases. New recruits must complete a rigorous training program and supervised onboarding period before they can independently handle serious matters. Skipping this critical step, he argued, would amount to a failure of professional responsibility and a betrayal of public trust.
Existing staff are already pushed to their absolute breaking point, Gaspard added. Prosecutors not assigned to the Assize courts already manage crushing caseloads across a network of lower courts, including district courts, masters’ courts, children’s courts and bail courts. Every single one of these attorneys carries more than 70 active matters, requiring them to appear in court on a daily basis. Stretching this already overloaded workforce to cover three or four new courts would inevitably erode both the quality and timeliness of prosecutorial work across the entire system, Gaspard warned, calling the current request simply unworkable.
Additional strains on the system come from emerging procedural changes, including a growing volume of fast-track court matters, an increase in both capital and non-capital bail applications, and new judicial partner and master case management arrangements. Capital bail hearings, in particular, demand the attention of experienced prosecutors due to their urgency and complexity, placing an even greater burden on the limited pool of senior staff.
Gaspard also reminded Prescott that the ODPP has long held that each High Court judge requires a minimum of two assigned prosecutors to operate effectively, a standard that has been endorsed by multiple veteran judges. This two-prosecutor model is critical for managing trials and conducting required case management conferences. Furthermore, the recent practice of assigning multiple masters to a single judge’s case docket requires prosecutors to appear before multiple judicial officers at conflicting times, creating additional logistical chaos for a depleted team.
Under the new Administration of Justice (Indictable Proceedings) Act (AJIPA), Gaspard noted, prosecutors assigned to the High Court are now required to file new indictments on a daily basis, with strict non-negotiable deadlines. If the ODPP cannot meet these deadlines due to understaffing, the core efficiency gains the legislation was designed to deliver will never materialize, defeating the entire purpose of the reform.
Gaspard pointed out that these concerns were already raised at a February Criminal Backlog Reduction Dialogue hosted by Chief Justice Ronnie Boodoosingh, where all participating stakeholders agreed that eliminating the case backlog would be impossible without first expanding and strengthening the ODPP’s staffing capacity. The Judiciary’s current request to staff new courts without prior meaningful collaborative planning therefore came as an unexpected departure from the consensus reached during that dialogue.
Gaspard also addressed a new problematic practice: teams of newly appointed judges have begun reaching out directly to individual prosecutors to coordinate scheduling and case matters. While he supports robust judicial case management, Gaspard warned that unvetted direct contact risks creating administrative inconsistency and can inadvertently place unfair pressure on individual prosecutors. All such communications, he requested, should be routed through the ODPP’s Indictment Department with a copy sent to the Director to maintain consistency and fairness.
Staffing shortages are not the only challenge facing the ODPP. Gaspard also noted the office suffers from inadequate physical office space and a parallel shortage of administrative and clerical staff, forcing prosecutors to divert time away from legal work to handle routine administrative tasks. Gaspard characterized the challenges facing the ODPP as systemic, rooted in a failure to match judicial expansion with corresponding investment in prosecutory capacity.
“While the expansion of judicial capacity is laudable and necessary, it must be accompanied by parallel investments in prosecutorial and administrative resources if the intended gains in efficiency are to be realised,” Gaspard wrote.
Despite the current impasse, Gaspard reaffirmed that the ODPP remains committed to collaborative problem-solving with the Judiciary and other criminal justice stakeholders. The office is open to negotiating pragmatic, interim measures to ease pressure on the system, he said, as long as the ODPP is given sufficient advance notice to adjust staffing and plan appropriately.