THE lifting of the moratorium on capital punishment in Pakistan has thrown a light on the dark corners of its criminal justice system.

None perhaps can be darker than those condemned prisoners who were juveniles when they committed the crimes for which they were sentenced to death.

A recent report by Justice Project Pakistan and Reprieve indicates that such inmates could well number around 800, in other words 10pc of the 8,000-plus individuals on death row across the land.

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That statistic in itself, if true — even without the ongoing furore over the case of Shafqat Husain — offers a shocking insight into the lack of safeguards for juveniles in Pakistan’s criminal justice system.

This, 25 years after signing the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child according to which “every child deprived of liberty shall be treated with humanity and respect”.

There also exists domestic legislation to specifically deal with young offenders. However, in practice many of the provisions of the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance 2000 remain unimplemented, thereby jeopardising the rights of minors to due process and fair trial.

In the first place, for the JSSO to be applicable, an individual’s age needs to be determined but most of those netted by the criminal justice system belong to disadvantaged homes that do not possess documentation such as birth certificates, school records etc.

Moreover, in the chaotic rough-and-tumble of our legal system where indigent accused are usually dependent on overburdened and barely competent state-appointed counsel, the question of their age can fall by the wayside.

Provisions in the JSSO that remain unmet include the establishment of juvenile courts in the manner prescribed along with related procedural requirements. The legislation also calls for more borstals to be set up for detention of minors.

However, juvenile-specific detention centres remain inadequate, resulting in a number of young offenders being housed in close proximity with adults in regular prisons. Lack of resources compounded by youth makes them particularly vulnerable to abuse of all kinds behind bars as well as torture by police during the course of investigation.

Although according to a 2012 report, the number of juveniles in the prison system has declined significantly over the last few years, concerns about minors being on death row must be urgently addressed.

The spirit of juvenile justice is essentially reformative rather than retributive. There can be no greater retribution than the taking of a life.

Published in Dawn March 23rd , 2015

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