PRIME Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines Dr Ralph Gonsalves believes criminal defence lawyers are being allowed to control the Caribbean's criminal justice system for monetary gain "under the guise of protecting the rights of the accused person."

He said judges and magistrates must hold themselves accountable for the continuation of this.

He was speaking at the final day of the Caricom symposium on crime at the Hyatt Regency, Port of Spain on Tuesday.

During his speech, he spoke about what he called a "narrow, economistic argument" that poverty is the main cause of crime.

Many in the audience applauded, but Gonsalves followed this up by saying, "Some of the people who applauded me are lawyers...so I come to that."

He said everyone knows that "the oxygen of the legal profession is money," and that lawyers use delays in the court system to their benefit.

"...In order to have trials adjourned and adjourned and adjourned and they complain how long the trial takes."

He said some complaints are warranted because at times, the issue is a lack of resources.

"...And I'm not denying that. But too many judges have allowed too many lawyers who practise criminal law to control the court system under the guise of protecting the rights of the accused person, who, in fact, is entitled constitutionally to the presumption of innocence, to a fair trial before an independent tribunal within a reasonable time."

He said nobody would wish to undermine any of those constitutional protections.

But, he added, the protections cannot mean "you must take a long time over a trial and give adjournment upon adjournment and witnesses migrate and memories fade and a lot of times you have to withdraw the prosecution – because delay is part of the defence, and judges ought to know that."

He said the families of victims neither understand nor appreciate any of this.

The people who complain about delays in the justice system, he said, are within their rights.

"And if a politician opens his mouth and says it, they say you're interfering in the independence of the judiciary.

"Justice is not a cloistered virtue, and just as I am subject to reasonable criticism, judges themselves and magistrates must be subjected to reasonable criticism...It is not a contempt of court so to do."

Speaking to the media after Gonsalves' speech, Chief Justice Ivor Archie said judiciaries are not immune to criticism.

"I don't think any judiciary in the region, including ours, is doing what it needs to do perfectly.

"But I think one of the things that people often lose sight of is that the judiciary depends on input from so many other stakeholders to do its job. So I think we all have to be performing optimally if you are really going to improve the justice system."

He said there was new legislation in the works to speed up the criminal justice system, "including the elimination of preliminary inquiries.

"I take the point that Prim