Criminal Justice Reform Essay

Need of Reforms in Criminal Justice System

Law is a set of rules and regulation prescribed by the administration in justice. The first and the foremost objective of law are welfare and betterment of society i.e. in easy words we can say that provide justice to a common man. In today’s era Change is constant, this is evident as the time is changing and so is the law in the form of amendment. But even in the new phase of legislations the “criminal justice system” of India is yet to improve. The biggest obstacle is that, we have very old substantive and procedural laws for the criminal justice system. The Indian Penal Code is of 1860; with the passage of time the conditions are changing. Before Indian Independence there were some moral values existed in the society but since the times are changing, the
approach and outlook towards the legal system is also moving away from its goal.

Many experts of law talk about the speedy justice but no one thinks about the speedy trial, which is one of the obstacles in the way of speedy justice. There is huge pendency of criminal cases in our country. Today a common man prefers to compromise with his justice instead of going in for litigation. NCRV latest report says 79% IPC cases were investigated in the year 2006, 78.4% of them were charge sheeted, 83% of them were trialed and 41.8% resulted in conviction, whereas in UK, USA and France rate of conviction is more then 90%. India is the second largest population in the world and per million, population of judges in India is 12 to 13. Corresponding figure available for USA is 107, UK is 51, for Canada is 75 and for Australia it is 19. Supreme court has given the decision in this issue in “All India Judges Association & others v. Union of India” (2002) 4 SCC 247, directed that the population of judges should be 50 per million in a phased manner within 5 years. Five years has passed and conditions remain unchanged. If this will be the circumstances after the verdict of the apex body of our judiciary then I am quite sure that it will be interesting to analyze the conditions of other units of administration of justice.
Another hindrance in the criminal justice system is that there is no proper coordination between prosecution and the police. Law relating to custody is really need to improve, because offences related to Hardcore crimes like rape, murder & robbery etc. are resulted to injustice because of its old procedures instead of its merits. With the passage of time we are witnessing the brutal and cruel type of rape cases but the punishment is still same for those offences. On the other hand, flexibility in law is also necessary because the prostitution and other adulterous relations in the society can be easily seen in the present culture. On the other side, there should be reformation or amendment in law pertaining to “bail” is necessary because sometimes in various matters discretion of judge affects the merits of the case.

Malimath Report is a essential chapter in the subject of Criminal Justice System.
This was the report given by malimath committee which was formed for the latest scenario of criminal justice system by ministry of home affairs in Nov. 2000 headed by former CJI of Kerala and member of NHRC, Justice V.S. Malimath. The Report submitted by malimath start with quote “Everything has been said already but as no one listens, we must always begin again”.

The committee presented its report in six different parts i.e. fundamental principles, Investigation & prosecution, Judiciary, Crime & punishment, looking ahead, and concluded with recommendations. It was found that the government was introducing a bill to amend the code of criminal procedure, reflecting a few of committee’s recommendations. The recommendations of committee cover are wide ranging, from making confession to the police admissible to the courts, to making matrimonial cruelty a bailable offence; they include placing a police officer as head of prosecution and adding former from the prevention of terrorism Act (POTA), in to regular penal law, However there was no official government response to the
report.

There are so many examples in our legal history for ex. cases such as 26/11 Mumbai attack case, Best Bakery, Parliament attack, Priyadarshini Motto, 93 bomb blast, and the recent verdict of Supreme Court in Jessica Lal Case etc., it can be seen that some complexities of law putting lacunae and loopholes in legal system which is a clear indication that a sign of danger is knocking the door of legal system. Today due to loopholes and flaws in criminal justice system, terrorism has been a biggest threat to our country. Absence of proper laws and flexible justice system, are coming in such a way that nowadays before a thought of development & employment we are taking an initiative to solve the problem of terrorism. In future, if necessary reforms are not taken into account then it may possible that people would eventually lose faith in justice system and legal proceedings in India.