OECS case profile review: An analysis of criminal and civil cases in the Magistrates Court of the OECS

Abstract

Policy makers and Court officials in the OECS operate with limited information on the volume and type of cases going through the courts. They also lack any systematic recordof who is before the courts, how cases are disposed of and what factors contribute to thespeed with which cases work their way through the system.This analysis represents a first attempt to address this information gap in a systematic andquantitative way. Information was gathered and analyzed for the year 2000 on some 28,000 cases coming before the Magistrates Court in each member State of the OECS.