By FeimaSesay
The Judiciary of Sierra Leone has released a press release on the 25th August, 2023. In that press release, the Chief Justice has assigned 23 judges to handle 802 cases. The press release states: “…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 28th August, 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 and in the provinces. These offenses include murder, robbery with aggravation, sexual offenses, manslaughter, shop breaking, housebreaking, office breaking, wounding, larceny, burglary, malicious damage, child stealing, assault, embezzlement, and fraudulent conversion among others.”
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. Apart from the foregoing, the press release also stated: “The aim of this exercise apart from decongesting correctional centers, 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 ration.