ISLAMABAD: Federal Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Thursday approved a plan to revamp the criminal justice system, observing that weak prosecution and flawed investigation were the main reasons for low conviction rate of terrorists and criminals.

He endorsed the idea of forming a core group to propose reforms in the criminal justice system, floated during a meeting presided over by Interior Secretary Arif Khan. The core group will comprise stakeholders from the federal and provincial governments, civil society, political parties and international organisations working on criminal justice system reforms in Pakistan.

The federal core group will have sub-committees of provincial governments which will submit their recommendations to the core group.

“Terrorist attacks, violence and loopholes in the criminal justice system require greater commitment from the state to ensure harsher punishment for terrorists and anti-state elements,” Chaudhry Nisar stressed while chairing another meeting.

He said that consensus on speedy and logical reformation of the criminal justice system taking all key aspects into consideration must be evolved on an emergency basis.

He directed the National Counter Terrorism Authority to look into the issue of justice system under its mandated National Action Plan with the objective of introducing reforms in the criminal justice system.

To ensure that reformation objectives were swiftly achieved in a given timeframe with clear working guidelines, the minister said, the core group should review the previous work done on the criminal justice system by the judiciary and foreign entities to help establish a way forward and achieve reformation target in minimum possible time.

Experts believe that a low conviction rate is nothing surprising in a system where investigators are poorly trained and lack access to basic data and modern investigation tools. Prosecutors, also poorly trained, are not closely involved in investigations. Corruption and intimidation compromise cases before they come to courts.

They point out that in the absence of scientific evidence collection methods and a credible witness protection programme, police and prosecutors mostly rely on confessions by the accused, which are inadmissible in court. Militants and other major criminals are regularly released on bail or their trials linger on for years even as they plan operations from prisons.

Despite increasing urgency of reforms, police and the whole criminal justice system still largely function on the imperative of maintaining public order rather than tackling crime.

Some of the recommendations made to reform the criminal justice system in the past include establishment of a robust witness protection programme and making the protection of witnesses, investigators, prosecutors and judges in major criminal cases, particularly terrorism cases, a priority, amendment to the evidence act to require investigators to incorporate scientific methods and data in investigations, modernising police force by enhancing scientific evidence collection.

Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2016

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