In the Driver’s Seat

Kampala was as I remembered it – a bustle of activity on the road from the airport into town, even at close to midnight.  David Nary, Pepperdine alumnus who is serving a one-year Nootbaar Fellowship in Uganda, along with the trusty Daniel who has served as the driver for the prior Fellows over the past three years, had picked me up and shuttled me to the large house just outside of Kampala where the Sixty Feet interns stayed.  The Sixty Feet team had graciously permitted me to stay with them during this trip, decreasing the expenses for this trip.

As I tried to articulate to those who had asked why I was coming back to Uganda mid-week, mid-semester, the best response I could muster was “I am looking for someone to occupy the driver’s seat.”  During my six months in Uganda earlier this year, we had initiated several projects that were aimed at vastly improving the efficiency of the juvenile justice system – moving children from arrest to trial in a fraction of the time it has historically taken.  The difficulty in implementing reforms is often not in the initial injection, but in the longer-term integration of the program into the DNA of the organism.

The J-FASTER pilot program had gone off as planned.  The first post-pilot iteration of the program went even better.  We emptied a Remand Home of all twenty-two of the juveniles awaiting trial – some cases were dismissed for lack of evidence, many kids were released because they had already served more time while awaiting trial than their misdeeds warranted, and some were serving out the rest of the sentences they were justly given.  But when I left, and when the Sixty Feet legal intern Abby left, the driver’s seat was empty.  The car was fueled and fine-tuned, but no one was at the wheel.  Unfortunately, this car is not a drone – remote control from Malibu is not an option.

Friday saw four meetings with four possible drivers for J-FASTER.  My court-assigned driver, Michael, from earlier this year picked me up in the morning, but he wasn’t driving the car we had previously used.  In fact, he wasn’t even driving.  Instead, he arrived in the passenger seat of a van driven by another court driver.  The car assigned to Michael was in the shop, so he took what was available.  But what was available was a gas-guzzling 15-seater that came with its own driver.  Accordingly, Michael was simply along for the ride.  I was quite touched by his display of loyalty – Friday was a national holiday, and he could have been home with his family.

I met up with David at the Commercial Court building where we had our first meeting with a representative of UNICEF.  She had arrived in Uganda from India just before I left, and our paths had not crossed.  Abby had been corresponding with her from the United States and had sent her my final report about J-FASTER.  She had read it with interest and wanted to chat further about potentially partnering with us on future J-FASTER sessions.  David had met her briefly the day before, along with Sarah from the Criminal Division of the High Court, and things were looking promising.  After our meeting, things still quite promising, but not necessarily immediate.  UNICEF’s budget coincides with the calendar year, so we are still a few months away from any sense of whether any UNICEF funds can be allocated to this.  Over the course of the conversation, it became clear that UNICEF would not be able to climb into the driver’s seat.  Their role in these types of projects is to work behind the scenes and to assist with funding and logistics.

Next, we traveled to the Naguru Remand Home to check in with the good folks who feed, shelter, and counsel with the juvenile inmates while they await trial.  David and I confirmed that there are now at least a dozen kids whose capital crime cases have been committed for trial.  This means that there is nothing that is preventing their cases from immediately moving forward.  All they need is someone to put the J-FASTER car into gear.  As we already knew, the probation officers and warden at the Remand Home lack the power and authority to move anything along – their role is to react once things start moving forward.  With respect to the data-base project, the data points are being gathered and prepared for entry into the system, but some bureaucratic snags have prevented the entry from happening.  Hopefully, a meeting early next week will get things moving again.

From the Remand Home, we journeyed out to Uganda Christian University to meet with Brian Dennison, an American lawyer who has been working with the UCU law school for nearly four years.  Brian has coordinated the joint efforts we have undertaken with UCU on prior juvenile sessions, including the J-FASTER pilot program.  Brian reaffirmed UCU’s commitment to assisting the Uganda Christian Legal Fraternity lawyers in their representation of the kids in the Remand Homes.  We also talked about future collaborations as we attempt to integrate plea bargaining into the adult criminal justice system.  While UCU is and will continue to be a valuable partner in all of our efforts, they are not in the position to get into the driver’s seat.

From UCU, we went to dinner at my favorite restaurant at the Emin Pasha Hotel.  We were joined at dinner by Duncan, a Ugandan lawyer who represented the adults in the few cases where they had been charged with the juveniles in the J-FASTER session.  Duncan also teaches criminal procedure at Kampala International University and is a proactive, reform-minded guy who truly wants to help change the system.  In fact, Duncan, along with Sarah, served as the lead mediator in the plea bargaining activities in Masindi for the first J-FASTER follow-on session to the pilot program.  With his assistance, all twenty-two cases were resolved without trial.  Duncan is fully on board and eager to play a role, but as a private lawyer, he is unable to climb into the driver’s seat himself.

None of this came as a surprise.  I had no illusions that any of these four meetings would result in a driver.  But these meetings were of critical importance in introducing and connecting these players with David, to whom I hope to be able to hand the keys soon so he can rev the engine and squeal some tires.

Speaking of keys, through a friend from my prior time here, I had a rental car delivered to the restaurant while we ate.  It just didn’t seem right to be riding around in a van while my driver sat in the passenger seat.  Accordingly, I am back in an actual driver’s seat, wrong side of the road and all.  Uganda just became a bit less safe for pedestrians and boda boda drivers.