Audit reveals Prosecutor General's Office lacks proper remand review process

Auditor General's Office has revealed that the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) does not review remands properly within the set policies.

This was flagged via a performance audit of the PGO. According to the Audit Office, remand reviews have not been carried out properly in accordance with the policy on criminal cases, which came into effect in 2019.

As such, the audit report recommended that the remand of detainees who are remanded pending the outcome of their trial be reviewed every 30 days as required by the policy.

Highlighting that complete information on appeal cases were also not available at the PGO, the Audit Office also recommended proper document management to allow such information to be easily accessible.

The audit also noted that many aspects of prosecution and duty prosecution need enhancing, attributing this to the delays in investigating cases after the first duty schedule.

The audit report also said that although a large number of duty schedules were required for some types of cases, they were left out of duty prosecution due to the extended duration. To remedy this, it was recommended to expedite such cases and reduce the number of cases.

It was further highlighted that the PGO prosecutes many cases forwarded to the office. The Audit Office detailed that although prosecution rates were maintained at 90 percent since 2019, it took a long time to prosecute some cases.

Although prosecution of criminal cases progress adequately, further work needs to be done to strengthen and expedite the process, the report said. The audit primarily focused on the work done by the PGO from 2018 to 2021. However, the Audit Office said that some of the 2022 cases were also been considered due to the nature of the components.