Our Programs

The Problem

Illegal detention between arrest and first court appearance affects primarily the poor. It is a worldwide problem and SDG 16, aimed at improving access to justice, was intended in part to address the problem.  So far, progress has been slow.  In 2017, the United Nations noted that  globally, “the proportion of people held in detention without being sentenced for a crime has remained almost unchanged — from 32 per cent of total prisoners in 2003-2005 to 31 per cent in 2013-2015 — which indicates that substantive progress has not been achieved in the ability of judicial systems to process and try the accused in a fair and transparent manner.”

The problem of illegal pretrial detention begins with the unlawful delay between arrest and the first appearance of the suspect before an independent magistrate. Most countries have a time, set by law, at which a suspect arrested and in custody must appear before a magistrate.  It can be 24 hours, two days, or more. All over the world and more often in developing countries, persons are not produced before an independent magistrate within the legally required time.  Suspects, primarily poor, are kept in police custody or other pretrial detention facilities, where they are often tortured and pressured to pay corrupt officials for their release. 

 

The Solution

The Court-Access App is a simple, inexpensive, and a user-friendly technological solution to the problem.   The Court-Access App will be downloaded to a smart-phone type device carried by police officers on the street, connected to a similar device held by officers at the pretrial detention facility, connected to a similar device held by the Clerk of the court.  The arresting officer will enter the name of the suspect or other basic identifying information relied upon at arrest in the given jurisdiction. If the arrest takes place at the site of the crime, the location will be generated through GPS technology and will automatically identify the court with jurisdiction over that location. If the crime occurred elsewhere, the location will be entered in the App.  The App will notify the connected App at pretrial detention facility.  Should a police officer fail to enter the information, the detention facility will do so. The App will then automatically calculate the day the detained suspect must appear before a magistrate and notify the clerk of the court in charge of the court calendar.  The case will then be placed on the court calendar.  On the set day, if the suspect is not produced in court, the magistrate will know and be able to order the relevant officials to produce the suspect. Simple connected Court-Access apps, one in the hands of the arresting officer, one at the pretrial detention center or police lock-up, and one in the office of the clerk of the court could eliminate illegal detention between arrest and first court appearance through easy and transparent communication between different departments.

Eliminating this early illegal detention will have a ripple effect throughout the pretrial detention phase of a criminal case, as it will ensure, early judicial oversight and potential earlier access to legal aid such that suspects are not forgotten in pretrial detention. 


 

 

The Court-Access Project

The Court-Access Project will develop and test the App, quantify its impact and advocate for its implementation.   

  • Step 1: Developing a prototype (6 months):

Notification apps exist and the technology is not complicated. During the development phase, the Project will identify the type of information relied upon in different jurisdictions when a suspect is arrested (i.e. name, place of birth, name and the father, national identification number); where and when officers or custodians enter the information (place of arrest, detention facility); who will be in charge of the data (the court system, the police department), etc.… The purpose of this research will be to also ensure that the prototype is transferable and flexible so as to be customized for different contexts. The Court-Access App will require the development of strong security and privacy protections as well as flexibility to allow the input of different information in different languages.

 

  • Step 2: Presenting the Prototype (November 2018):

The Court-Access App prototype will be rolled-out at the Third International Conference on Access to Legal Aid in Criminal Justice Systems, scheduled to be held in Tbilisi in November 2018.  The first two International Conferences on Access to Legal Aid in Criminal Justice Systems, in Johannesburg in 2014, and Buenos Aires in 2016, attracted members of the legal profession, government officials, ministers of justice, attorney generals, judges, and members of the rule of law and development community from over 60 countries.  Participants in Tbilisi will be able to test the prototype and provide input to improve it.  

  • Step 3: The Pilot Project (January 2019 to May 2020):

Improvements suggested in Tbilisi will be incorporated into the App and tested during the pilot project phase.  The Court-Access Project will identify at least two jurisdictions where the police departments and court systems are willing to cooperated and test the App.  The Project will partner donors with these pilot jurisdictions. Researchers with the Court-Access Project will study the impact of the App on arrest-to-first-court-appearance delays.  Lessons learned from the pilot projects will be incorporated into the final Court-Access App methodology.  

 

  • Step 4: Roll-out of the Court-Access app (September 2020).

Roll out the final Court–Access App will take place at a side event surrounding the General Assembly meeting in 2020.

 

  • Step 5: Dissemination of the Court-Access App (2020-2022)

The Court-Access Project will use the Fourth International Conference on Access to Legal Aid in Criminal Justice Systems, currently planned for late 2020, to roll out the final Court-Access App and assist countries adopting the App to tackle their arrest-to-first-court-appearance delays.  For the following two years, the Court-Access Project will engage in an awareness campaign among rule of law and governance NGOs and INGOs to promote and expand the use of the App. 

The Court-Access Project will work with the U.N., its member states, and participants in the high level political forum for sustainable developments in 2019, to draw their attention on illegal arrest-to-first-court appearance delays in the fight against global illegal pretrial detention. 

 

History of The Court-Access Project

The Court-Access Project is an independent offspring of the International Legal Foundation (www.TheILF.org).  For the past 20 years, lawyers at the ILF have provided criminal defense services to the poor in countries post-conflict and in transition.  For 20 years, they have faced the problem of illegal arrest-to-first-court-appearance delays in Afghanistan, Nepal, the West-Bank, Tunisia, and Myanmar.  Lawyers with its predecessor organization, Legal Aid Rwanda, faced the same but magnified problem in Rwanda in 1997 where thousands of persons accused of genocide had been detained for three years and never been brought before a judge. 

Early board members of Legal Aid Rwanda and the ILF, Natalie Rea and Richard Joselson, along with Anita Aboagye-Agyeman, a public defender in New York, Benoit Turcotte, a criminal defense lawyer in Montreal, and Siddharth de Souza, a doctoral candidate in law at the Humboldt University of Berlin have joined to tackle the problem of illegal pretrial detention from arrest-to-first-court appearance.