Crown lawyers are struggling to provide a “first rate prosecution service” because of increasing workloads and understaffing within the Department of Public Prosecutions.

And a drive to cut costs through pay cuts and furloughs is having a “moral deflating” effect that “does nothing to recognise the importance of the fine work done by the staff of the DPP”, according to the department’s director, Rory Field.

Mr Field made his comments on Friday during a special sitting of the Supreme Court to usher in the official opening of the new legal year. The ceremony was presided over by Chief Justice Ian Kawaley, and guests included Governor George Fergusson and Solicitor General Melvin Douglas, who was standing in for the absent Attorney General, Mark Pettingill.

After giving a summary of the DPP’s achievements in 2013, Mr Field went on the attack, slamming spending cuts that, he suggested, threatened to undermine the DPP’s capacity “to do its job well”.

“I cannot pretend to be anything but disappointed by the furlough and associated five percent pay cut to staff in the Department of Public Prosecutions,” he said.

“At a time when work has increased, they are being sent home for a day a month and being given a pay cut.

“This is moral deflating and does nothing to recognise the importance of the fine work done by the staff of the DPP. Further, a lot of time is wasted trying to work out the furlough against court commitments.

“Care must be taken not to undermine the Department of Public Prosecution’s capacity to do its job well and fulfil its Constitutional functions.”

Mr Field said the department’s biggest challenge recently had been to provide a first rate prosecution service “when we have so few prosecutors, many of whom are at a relatively early stage in their legal career”.

“But if anything, this challenge has increased over the last few years,” he added.

“In the 1980s when I was Called to the Bar there were nothing like the number of areas of specialisation within crime that there are now.

“There was no cyber crime to speak of, no laptops, no cell phones, no DNA evidence, no blood spatter analysis, no gunshot residues analysis or any of the other developments that we have now.

“Because there were less areas of specialisation, there was less for a prosecutor to learn and master.”

Mr Field said that forensics had placed an additional burden on prosecution costs, with a single test costing several hundred dollars.

“A by-product of this increase in the use of forensics has been the lengthening of these types of trial, so that a murder case which might have lasted a week now lasts several weeks,” he said.

The prosecutor claimed that court staff now felt under threat because of “a greater willingness of criminals to threaten witnesses and try to undermine the judicial process”.

“This brings in the question of security of staff working within the criminal justice system,” he said.

And he claimed that multi-defendant trials were also putting a strain on prosecutors who have to “deal with several sets of defence leading counsel and juniors”.

“The final overwhelming factor which has increased the caseload of the most serious crimes is the huge growth in gun crimes and murders over the last few years which has been characterised as an offshoot of the development of criminal gangs in Bermuda,” Mr Field went on.

“The result has been the great increase of these types of complex, resource hungry cases. Now my staff often have a much more demanding case load than would have been seen only five years ago.

“Well you may think I have gone on a lot about the challenges to my Department but actually I have only touched the tip of the iceberg. My office also has to deal with all the very complex and paper heavy white collar crime, fraud and money laundering cases.

“These can take up an inordinate amount of time. Cases last many months, can only be marshaled by experienced prosecutors, require a prosecution team to work on each case and of course are very expensive in terms of cost and manpower to investigate and prosecute. We also have to consider proceeds of crime and how to remove money from criminals.

“We have to cover all these demanding cases, while still successfully covering our considerable caseload of more ordinary run-of-the-mill criminal offences and further providing a criminal law advisory service on a wide variety of areas of crime to other areas of Government.”

Mr Field concluded by insisting that Bermuda’s ability to prosecute needed to be built up.

“We must continue to build our ability to prosecute at the top level,” he said.

“We need to continue to train and develop the Bermudians in the Department. We would also like to see more Bermudians join the Department.

“We will also continue to seek to recruit in expertise from international lawyers, where we cannot find it domestically.”