IF nothing else, it was good to see the four provincial chief executives sharing a common platform. The chief ministers of Punjab, Sindh, KP and Balochistan gathered last week for the National Conference on Prison Reforms, hosted by the Supreme Court. Together, they signed the Islamabad Declaration on Prison Reforms, committing to a coordinated national effort to reform provincial prison systems. They promised to reduce unnecessary incarceration by expanding access to bail, legal aid and non-custodial alternatives like probation and parole, particularly for vulnerable groups such as women, children and those detained for minor, poverty-related offences. They also resolved to review existing legal frameworks to align prison administration with constitutional and human rights standards, whilst increasing investment in healthcare, sanitation and safeguards against torture.

But while all these reforms read well on paper, will they actually be carried out, or have the chief ministers merely put their names to the document as a formality? Time will tell. There is a deeper irony, too, in the way the politicians grounded their advocacy for jail reforms in their own or other leaders’ experiences. CM Maryam Nawaz, for example, shared that her imprisonment ‘changed her forever’. CM Sohail Afridi highlighted the challenges faced by the PTI’s incarcerated chief, while demanding that reforms begin at Adiala Jail. It is doubtful that either leader has ever experienced what most ordinary Pakistanis do. Pakistan’s jails do not need to be experienced for one to understand what ails them. Our entire penal system is the product of a deeply flawed approach to human rights and dignity that only understands the logic of power and who wields it; a remnant of the colonial era, as the law minister so aptly put it. It is a system in which who gets punished and how severely still depend on how much power a person holds. The poor, the voiceless and the unconnected absorb its cruelties while the influential are spared. For prisons to see true reform, therefore, the national leadership must first decolonise their conceptions of power and learn to see and treat the weakest citizen as their equal. Such humility has traditionally been severely lacking in Pakistani politics, but till leaders come to terms with the inequalities and injustices they benefit from — and are therefore incentivised to perpetuate — there can be no meaningful change.

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2026