HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — Days before the start of the new year, Supreme Court of Guam Chief Justice Robert Torres spoke to The Guam Daily Post and reflected on the first year of his third term as the leader of the Judiciary of Guam.
As he did during his State of the Judiciary address at the start of 2023, Torres highlighted the importance of the Judiciary’s role in addressing the rise of methamphetamine use on the island.
Torres, while explaining strong enforcement was necessary, said he is taking a “holistic approach.”
“I think the data is clear that you can’t simply arrest (and) incarcerate people. You have to think about a holistic approach to how we’re going to address this problem. Yes, strong enforcement, but also you need treatment and programming. And you need to provide alternatives and reentry for people when they do get released from prison so they don’t have to reoffend again,” Torres said.
In the past year, Torres explained a total of 340 individuals across all the treatment courts were served, which he feels is the best way to cure the drug problem.
“It is an illness and there are alternatives to incarceration that can be effective. And that treatment can be effective. And that will help sort of break the destructive pattern. And in doing so, I think it makes our community more secure,” Torres said.
“We’ve been pretty proud of what we’ve been successful with our therapeutic courts,” Torres added, revealing the Judiciary received $5.7 million in federal grant funding to further improve the therapeutic courts.
Data
Torres said another important initiative during his term was collecting data, in particular statistics showing defendants’ performance while on pretrial release.
Considering Torres’ stance on trying to treat rather than to incarcerate every defendant charged, Torres felt the number of pretrial defendants who don’t violate their conditions of release has been promising.
“With the data we’ve been tracking since the beginning of this year, … I think it shows that 92% who are released pretrial don’t commit new offenses,” Torres stated, admitting it’d be difficult to reach 100%.
“Yes, there are people who are released pretrial who will commit offenses. … It’s not a perfect world, and you’re never going to have 100%, but the vast majority of them are not reoffending while they’re on pretrial (release),” Torres said.
The presumption of innocence, Torres explained, is a primary reason for collecting data – which shows most defendants out on release don’t reoffend.
“Part of the danger of putting people in pretrial detention … is that oftentimes they’ll lose their job. Then they’re not going to be able to support their families. They’re not going to be able to pay their rents. They’re going to end up being evicted from their homes. … So it ends up compounding the problems that they have,” Torres said.
“We still are built on a system of presumed innocent and that’s our democracy and that’s what is important. So I think that I wanted to make sure that we address the pretrial issues, started collecting accurate data, really looking at what’s happening, making our judges understand we know there are some risks to the community, and they should be appropriately detained, but the majority of people, and our data shows, don’t reoffend,” Torres added.
Torres was asked about Attorney General Douglas Moylan, who also started his term in 2023 and who every month since has been releasing the “Catch, Release and Reoffend Report,” in line with his “Tough on Crime” initiative. The report details how many defendants charged this year have violated the conditions of their release. In response, Torres said he was open to meeting with Moylan to discuss strategy.
2024
During his first year, Torres said, he also has been able to assure attorneys and judges are paid appropriately to “keep the wheels of justice turning.”
He also discussed what can be expected in the upcoming year, which would be the 50th anniversary of the Court Reorganization Act of 1974, which established the local courts on the island.
In particular, Torres spoke about the investment into technology and creating more accessible and transparent courts with a new case management system, which will be available to the public and is set to be introduced within the next six months.
Additionally, Torres expects to introduce an online dispute resolution system, which will allow small claims and traffic cases to be resolved online.
Chief Justice Robert J. Torres is interviewed at the Guam Judicial Center in Hagåtña on Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2023.
