May 8, 2018: CODE PAKISTAN, in collaboration with the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), formally launched the Report on Addressing Overcrowding in Prisons by Reducing Pre-Conviction Detention in Pakistan. National Coordinator NACTA Mr. Ihsan Ghani Khan was the Chief Guest of the event, while Secretary Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan and Head of the Delegation of ICRC Mr. Reto Stocker also graced the occasion. The event held in Islamabad was widely attended by senior-level government officials, members of the judiciary, lawyers, experts, and members of the civil society.
The Report on Addressing Overcrowding in Prisons by Reducing Pre-Conviction Detention in Pakistan is the culmination of a year-long effort that involved a thorough analysis of hundreds of related national and international research reports and relevant laws, analysis of latest available official data on the numbers of prisoners disaggregated by judicial status, age, and gender, as well as various statistics on police, prosecution, and the judiciary. In addition, the report also makes use of information obtained through a long process of consultations with senior-level criminal justice officials from the four provinces and two administrative territories, consultations with senior-level lawyers of the Islamabad Bar and the four provincial Bar Councils, consultations with subject matter experts, and individual interviews with senior-level criminal justice officials in their offices in the federal capital as well as the four provincial capitals.
The report finds that as of October 1, 2017, Pakistan had an overall occupancy rate of 157 percent in its prisons, meaning an excess prison population of 57 percent, leading to a significant overstretch of resources. Of those incarcerated, 66 percent, or two-thirds of the total prisoners, were still undergoing trial as of October 1, 2017. At 66 percent, the rate of under-trial prisoners (UTPs) in Pakistan’s prisons is much higher than the global median average rate of 27 percent.
Other problems associated with overcrowding, as discovered, included inadequate supply of food, water, sanitation, accommodation, healthcare, and correctional facilities because of overstretching of the prison resources. This, in turn, could lead to difficulties in the reintegration of prisoners into the society after their release, cause recidivism, spread communicable diseases, affect the families of the prisoners, and overburden state resources.
The Government of Pakistan has increased the numbers of prisons and increased the capacities of the existing ones in recent years to alleviate the plight of prisoners in overcrowded prisons. The impact of this exercise, however, has not been very significant. The reason being, that the capacity of prisons only addresses the supply side of the equation. Therefore, it is very important to ascertain and address the demand side causes of overcrowding, especially the high concentration of UTPs, for finding sustainable long-term solutions of prisons overcrowding. Several of those causes relate to criminal justice institutions other than the prisons, such as the police, prosecution, judiciary, and the lawyers.
Some of the problems identified in the report are overuse of arrest and detention in criminal justice policies, investigative shortcomings of the police, delays in submission of challans, resource constraints of the criminal justice institutions like the police, prosecution and the judiciary, underprivileged detainees’ limited access to legal counsel, inconsistent application of legal alternatives to detention in the pre-conviction stage like bail, and judicial delays caused by frequent adjournments of trials.
In view of the problems related to high pre-conviction detention leading to overcrowding in prisons, according to the report, there is an urgent need for an assessment of prison conditions and judicial visits for granting of bail and other judicial relief to deserving prisoners in the most overcrowded prisons. There is also a pressing need for introducing a screening of every prisoner for the most prevalent communicable diseases at the time of admission through in-house pathology labs in all prisons. Besides special measures for juvenile UTPs, there is also an urgent need for real-time monitoring of prison population across Pakistan through a web-based monitoring application that would help in directing help to the most overcrowded prisons as urgently as possible. Children accompanying incarcerated mothers is one of the most neglected subjects of Pakistan’s prison population and the government should take immediate measures to devise an institutional mechanism for their care, health, and education.
Besides the urgent measures, several medium- to long-term recommendations are made in the report, including addressing socio-economic causes leading to high pre-conviction detention, especially among children; balancing the use of imprisonment in the criminal justice policies through alternatives such as probation and community service; preventing unnecessary arrests and imprisonment at the police level by revising their performance criteria, improving investigation, and incentivizing the application of release by police officials; maximizing police resource and modernizing investigation methods through legal reforms, trainings, material support, etc.; improving the working conditions of public prosecutors and their coordination with the police, as well as empowering them to efficiently use their discretionary powers in withdrawing cases where sufficient evidence is lacking; improving access to legal counsel through the District Legal Empowerment Committees (DLECs) and other available platforms; reinforcing alternatives to pre-trial detention by improving laws and procedures on bail, use of diversion measures provided in the Juvenile Justice Bill of 2018, and use of ADRs where they have a solid legal basis and are subject of judicial oversight; removing obstacles and delays in accessing justice by introducing administrative actions against delays at the level of police and prosecution in submitting challans, taking measures against frequent adjournments of trials and excessive strikes by the lawyers, categorization of lawyers by specialty, empowerment of the disciplinary committees of the Bar Councils, strengthening the human resource capacity of the judiciary, and institutionalization of a regular interface of the criminal justice stakeholders at the district, provincial, and national levels; supporting effective prison management with a focus on moving from punitive detention to rehabilitation of prisoners, better implementation of laws regulating classification and separation of prisoners, structural changes to the existing framework of the Pakistan prison service and training manual, and digitization of prisoner records; and ensuring the safety and well-being of criminal justice stakeholders acts through prompt investigation of harassment, threats, or physical assaults directed against criminal justice actors, including judges, prosecutors, lawyers, police, prison staff, prisoners, and witnesses. The complete report can be downloaded here.