HARIPUR: To help the ex-detainees avoid recidivism and reintegrate into society as productive and law-abiding citizens, the Haripur police and Human Development Organisation (HDO-Pakistan) would jointly organise psychological rehabilitation sessions for the individuals who have either completed their jail sentences or their cases are at trial stage.

Haripur DPO Shafiullah Khan Gandapur said this while briefing journalists here the other day. Director Programme HDO-Pakistan Muhammad Ahsan Khan and young social worker Muhammad Zaigham Khan also attended the briefing.

The DPO said that enforcement of law and order in the society was aimed at providing protection to the life, honour and property of citizens was the top most duty of the police force but the protection of fundamental rights, human dignity of individuals were also priority areas of the police department.

“We hate crime but not the individuals and under the vision of KP IGP, we are going to introduce social-reintegration of ex-detainees for the first time in the history,” the DPO claimed.

Sharing details of social reintegration plan for ex detainees, Mr Gandapur said that the mapping of area under the jurisdiction of each police station for gathering details of ex-detainees whether they had completed their sentences or were out of jail after securing bails and their cases were at trial stages were the targeted communities of the rehabilitation plan. After the compilation of lists of ex detainees, the Haripur police and the HDO’s management would conduct psychological rehabilitation sessions in phases across the district.

To a question, the DPO made it clear that the policemen harassing the ex-detainees who were interested in changing their lives, reintegrating into society as responsible citizens, would be taken to task under the police rules.

HDO’s Director Programme Mohammad Ahsan Khan told the journalists that a majority of detainees who undergo different traumatic conditions from arrest to landing in jails often get their traumatic conditions multiplied with incarceration trauma.

“In absence of trauma-informed rehabilitation facilities in the public sector hospitals, such detainees especially those from poverty stricken families, develop different psychological disorders and get entrapped into vicious cycles of relapsing into criminal activities thus burdening not only the society but also the national exchequer,” he observed.

Published in Dawn, April 16th, 2026