ECONOMICS AND DISPENSATION OF JUSTICE

Probably the parallelism is not so sound about economics and dispensation of justice. We can argue that justice can be dispensed without taking economics into consideration. But whether we like it or not economics has it own big share in the effective and fair dispensation of justice.

There may be congenitally corrupt person but that is negligible in number as a matter of fact there could be none. It is the conglomeration of different factors after birth that usually corrupts a person. Weak moral fibers are easily snapped by necessity, the lure of having more than expected. People in the office dispensing justice are not different from other persons trying to earn a living. Give them enough to live decently and they will in all probability love and respect their position but make them miserable many will fall prey easily to corruptors.

Take the case of judiciary, there has been a long wait before the compensation of judges was raised to alleviate their economic sufferings. Those good lawyers in the private practice refrained from even entertaining the idea of being a judge. The principal concern is the minimal income.. The JBC tasked to select the judges to be appointed has to make do with only those that come along. Usually but not all those who applied passed their prime, already aged and would like to retire as judge or those who have no guts to face the rigor of court trial. But there are few of course in whose family runs the blood of being judge or justice. They are aggressive competent and ambitious. These are rare breed similar to some idealist but they can be seen far in between and not even enough to fill five per cent of the needs for competent judges.

In the same manner the dispensation of justice more particularly in the criminal justice system there is a need to increase the number of prosecutors to be at par with the increasing number of courts and judges. Without the sufficient number of competent prosecutors immensely the trials of criminal cases will suffer undue delay.

Just the same, the hindrance for the effective recruitment of prosecutors is economic gains. An earning practitioner will not sacrifice his big income mostly tax free for the sake of ideals that is to help clear the ever increasing dockets of pending criminal cases. On top of that small earning prosecutor has to performed formidable task of being a quasi judicial hearing officer. He determines whether a criminal case should be filed or not in court. After filing the case, he is expected to convince the court that the accused he charged is guilty to secure conviction. Otherwise he is an unworthy prosecutors accused of unduly harassing helpless citizens

Probably if the judges are granted amelioration from their economic suffering prosecutors too are equally in need of similar treatment. Probably too the increasing 40 % vacancy would be filled up as fast as it is vacated by retiring or transferring prosecutors. Not only that, the Department of justice could select the best there is in the field. (SANDY BELARMINO, 7LPC)