Bermuda is not ready to embrace criminal justice reforms adopted by Britain and the European Union, says the acting Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Kulandra Ratneser.

But officials involved in criminal investigations will soon have their own home grown code of practice governing disclosure of information gathered during those investigations.

Speaking on the heels of a seminar about disclosure practices in criminal investigations, Mr. Ratneser said that following Europe's lead would amount to a radical transformation of the criminal justice system. At issue is the prosecution's duty to share information with defendants and their lawyers. "When I took over as DPP, the requests that were being made by defence counsel were outrageous in my view," Mr. Ratneser said.

"There were requests asking that almost everything in government be disclosed. This concerned me a lot because people were worrying about what is to be disclosed and what is not to be disclosed. People in my office were concerned."

To be sure, some of the confusion within the DPP's office may be due to a lack of communication between that department and the Attorney General's office.

It was brought to Mr. Ratneser's attention during last weekend's seminar that former Attorney General Saul Froomkin had actually written up a comprehensive policy on disclosure for criminal investigations when he held that office in the 1980s.

After the 1998 General Election, the new Progressive Labour Party Government opted for a politically appointed Attorney General and created the DPP's office for criminal prosecutions. Previously the Attorney General was responsible for advising the government on civil matters as well as prosecuting alleged criminals.

Bermuda's judges also differed in their approaches to disclosure in sorting out disagreements between lawyers, said Mr. Ratneser. The problem, it appears, is that over the last decade or so, Britain has made some far reaching reforms in its criminal justice system, the net effect of which has been to make the prosecutor's job easier.

Prosecutors have always had to disclose the full extent of their case against an accused person, as well as information in their possession that might help the defence, or evidence that their witnesses could be unreliable.

But Britain began to tighten up the system following some high profile cases where accused murderers walked free when courts ruled that there had been a miscarriage of justice because the prosecutors had failed to disclose relevant information.

Britain overhauled the system with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE), and other reforms, which for the first time included measures which required defence counsel to disclose to the prosecution the basis of their defence before going to trial.

Some lawyers, including Mr. Ratneser, were startled by the change, saying that it eroded the rights of a defendant.

"PACE is based upon disclosure by the defence of the basis of their defence. No Commonwealth country other than Britain has gone that far and taken away the right of silence. And I don't think Bermuda is ready for that - its a fundamental change to the criminal justice system," Mr. Ratneser said on Sunday.

He revealed that he had strongly advised against implementing PACE in Bermuda, and said if it was implemented on a piecemeal basis "you place enormous burdens on the Crown which are virtually unachievable".

The measures had been recommended by a Commission looking into how Bermuda dealt with serious crimes, but have not been fully implemented. "The whole purpose of the seminar was to find some common basis - firstly what rules of disclosure are suitable for Bermuda. Secondly who's responsibility was it under the law," Mr. Ratneser said.

Jamaican Appeal court judge Paul Harrison and Lord Slynn of Hadley addressed the seminar on approaches taken in their respective countries. Also addressing the seminar were Bermuda's new Attorney General Larry Mussenden, and acting chief justice Norma Wade-Miller. Besides Police officers and prosecutors, participants included officials from the King Edward Memorial Hospital, Immigration and other civil servants who sometimes handle material that could be of relevance in a criminal investigation or trial.

Justice Wade-Miller described the subject as "notoriously difficult" but extremely important "The difficulty flows from the fact that there is no comprehensive statutory or non-statutory code within which such disclosure rules can be found," she said. "The answers to the questions that typically arise for prosecutors and affiliated public officials can only be found in disparate sources : an obscure statutory reference here, a decided case there, or perhaps an internal memo somewhere else."

She added that, compared to a rapidly evolving commercial legal regime, Bermuda had effectively neglected the need for criminal law reform. And she noted that it was appropriate for prosecutors and police officers to come up with a code of practice because as "ministers of justice" they had a duty to uphold the rule of law and protect fair trial rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

"Any breach of these rights, as regards disclosure or otherwise, will not only undermine the integrity of the prosecution process; but it may also result in an acquittal without regard to the merits of the prosecution's case," she said.

"So the first answer to the question 'why disclose' is that greater disclosure rather than less will make the prosecution system work better, and where the facts merit it, result in a more accurate conviction rate."

She added that clarifying the rules on disclosure will improve relations between prosecutors and defence lawyers, reduce delays and prevent "technical acquittals".

Mr. Ratneser said that a draft code of practice should be ready within a month.

"My (preferred) model would be the common law system being followed in the Caribbean Islands and Australia and some of the African countries," he said. "We are not part of Europe and we never will be... so we have got to develop a model that is suitable to what we have been following for over 100 years."