The Centre for Criminal Justice Reform and Capacity Building conducts extensive research on Pakistan’s criminal justice sector from both legislative and implementation perspective. It also partners with National and International Agencies in conducting trainings to identify and rectify shortcomings in Pakistan’s criminal justice sector.
Over the past several years RSIL has trained thousands of law enforcement personnel, probation officers, prosecutors, and judges in all four provinces of Pakistan. By adopting a continuous improvement process, RSIL’s capacity building initiatives have evolved to become the preferred option for numerous criminal justice sector educational and training institutes.
RSIL’s commitment to bringing innovation into the classroom has led to the development of a dedicated training platform – GatherSense – allowing for tablet based and online trainings. GatherSense has demonstrably improved participants’ interaction, focus, and retention. Modern trainings are designed to improve the knowledge and skills of participants in a range of areas yet progress on these fronts is difficult to gauge. GatherSense is designed to track participants progress against a set of pre-defined skills that can vary from training to training allowing us to pinpoint weaknesses, suggest remedial action, and improve our training curricula in real time. E.g. For a training to prosecutors on ‘Presenting Circumstantial Evidence at Trial’, we can separately track their progress towards their a) substantive legal knowledge of circumstantial evidence, b) knowledge of trial procedure, c) reasoning and analysis, and d) advocacy skills. This allows us to provide individualized feedback to participants and to improve our trainings going forward.
C3 is working towards the establishment of a National Observatory on Crime & Criminal Justice in collaboration with various criminal justice sector actors. The Observatory will serve to gather, verify, and analyze crime, judicial, sentencing, probation, and prison statistics with a view to providing decision makers with evidence on which to base policies and interventions. Importantly, an endeavor of this nature will unify criminal justice sector actors’ responses to crime, recidivism, reform, and rehabilitation.
C3 is currently seeking support from donors
The Centre benefits from excellent partnerships with key law enforcement, prosecution, and judicial institutions in Pakistan and abroad. In this regard, numerous MoUs and partnership agreements have been entered into to allow for the Centre’s research and expertise to be directly accessible by partners and stakeholders.
Dissenting Supreme Court opinion shows how gender stereotypes and misconstrued consent derail rape justice in Pakistan
Kamran Adil explores how unchecked FIR growth, weak pre-trial options and blurred federal-provincial roles clog Pakistan’s courts, and how supply-side fixes can help.
An analysis of the 2025 Amendments to The Prevention Of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA), 2016
An analysis of the Torture and Custodial Death (Prevention and Punishment) Act, 2022 and its significance for the Pakistani criminal justice system.
This article analyses the significance of BJP’s decision to re-write criminal law in India and its potential impacts.
An analysis of the issue of child marriages in Pakistan and the complexities in investigating these cases and implementing the law
The current state of digitalisation in the functioning of the police and in criminal trials in Pakistan
The use of digital forensics in criminal prosecutions and its integration with the criminal justice system in Pakistan
The Computer Emergency Response Team Rules, 2003 and strengthening the legal framework for cybersecurity in Pakistan
This article explores the salient features of the Anti-Rape (Sex Offenders Register) Rules, 2023 under section 24 of the Anti-Rape Act (Investigation and Trial), 2021
This article explores how the Police Order (Amendment) Ordinance, 2023 can play a role in policing organized crime in Punjab
This article explores the global policing landscape in the context of recent police shooting and subsequent riots in France
This article explores the prospects and challenges of rule making under the Anti-Rape (Investigation and Trial) Act, 2021
This article explores whether the Casey Review on Met Police can be used as a basis for police reforms in Pakistan
This articles explores the domestic and international legal frameworks applicable to trafficiking of persons in Pakistan
What is the legal framework of policing cyberspace in Pakistan? How have the laws infroming this framework evolved over the years?
The article traces the history of police reforms in Pakistan and stresses the need to decolonize the discourse on policing in Pakistan.
This article provides an overview of the policing system in Pakistan
This article examines the structural issues associated with policing murders under Pakistan’s criminal justice system
This article reviews the legal framework on control of narcotic substsances in Pakistan, specifically changes brought through the Control of Narcotics Substances (Amendment) Act 2022
This article explores the tribal custom of Ghag that has been practices in the Pakhtun-dominated regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for several hundred years.
This article explores the statutes that regulate surveillance and interception in Pakistan, as well as the procedures that are adopted by law enforcement agencies.
18th July is the date of birth of Nelson Mandela, an African leader who spent lot of time in prison during his political struggle. Named after him, the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners have been styled, internationally, as the Nelson Mandela Rules.
The article discusses the prevalence of gender-based violence with specific focus on its scope, types, and the legal protection afforded against it by international and constitutional standards.
This article explores the concept of establishing predicate offences in money laundering cases in light of the seminal Muhammad Rafique case
This article examines the jirga system in Pakistan and uses recent judgements to argue how they can be viewed as a transgression of human rights
This article examines the jirga system in Pakistan and uses recent judgements to argue how they can be viewed as a transgression of human rights
This article examines the potential impacts of the recent Safia Bano case on policing in Pakistan
This article examines how international law is shaping the policing of gender based violence in Pakistan.
This article aims to delve into the factors which prevent women from seeking help from the police and discusses the steps necessary to address the institutional and cultural impediments to women’s access to justice.
This article highlights the salient criminal amendments proposed by the Pakistani government and discusses their context and merits.
This articles uses instances of selective justice to highlight the threat it poses to the rule of law.
This article explores ways in which Pakistan can reshape its law enforcement and policing response to extremism and terrorism
This article highlights how to rethink and re-design a more optimistic discourse on the subject of criminal justice reform in Pakistan.
This article highlights recent instances where international human rights standards have been recognised in Pakistan’s criminal courts and analyses how they may be used as a tool within the criminal justice system.
This piece is concerned with the enactment of ITO 2020 and its implementation or lack thereof, while relying on the seminal Lahore High Court judgement in Yasir v. the State case as a guiding framework.
The article analyses the obstacles that have prevented effective implementation of the Protection Against Harassment of Women at Workplace Act (PAHWWA) 2010, and the progress that has been achieved since it was enacted
This article focuses on the role of Pakistan’s Criminal Justice System (CJS) with regards to establishing rule of law, with an emphasis on two oft-stated issues – delays in the registration of First Information Reports (FIRs), and poorly implemented witness protection programs. In addition to highlighting the causes and effects of the aforementioned issues, it also sheds light on the apparent failure of recent interventions that were made to mitigate these problems, before concluding with possible suggestions to resolve these issues.
This article focuses on the existing legislation on probation and parole in Pakistan, and explores the possibility of reforms in the existing legislation.
The Pakistan Prison Rules do not provide an adequate legal infrastructure to combat a viral pandemic outbreak. Rule 800 highlights the protocol for admission of new prisoners in situations where an epidemic disease is prevalent.
A society responds to crimes and wrongs in various ways. At an institutional level, it responds through its justice system, which manifests itself through its criminal and civil streams. The countries that accord priority to crimes and wrongs being caused to their citizens undertake serious academic research and then link the research to larger public policy to redress the grievances of their citizens.
The phenomenon of Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs) became a significant part of the international discourse in 2012, with the inflow of foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria to join the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria “ISIS” (also known as Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, or Daesh). In response to the threat posed by FTFs, Security Council Resolution 2178 was passed under binding Chapter VII powers, which urged member states to “ensure that their domestic laws and regulations establish serious criminal offences sufficient to provide the ability to prosecute and to penalize in a manner duly reflecting the seriousness…
Owing to the latest national security concerns, the centrality and primacy of criminal law in meeting national security requirements cannot be discounted. This post examines areas of concern that must be considered while imagining the role of criminal law in national security.
Although the Covid-19 pandemic has brought the world to a halt, it has concomitantly boosted the criminal economy by creating unprecedented circumstances, easily exploitable by a few. This piece aims to highlight the financial vulnerabilities that have been created due to the Covid-19 pandemic, while briefly discussing the potential safeguards against the exploitation of such vulnerabilities, as suggested by FATF—the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog.
In Pakistan’s society’s relationship to public policy is essentially emotional; the domain of criminal justice policy is no exception. There is hardly any discussion on sex crimes, especially rape and its species of offences, in the normal course of things.
If Pound’s axiomatic first step is taken in understanding laws related to Financial Action Task Force (FATF), it will transpire that many laws have virtually been rewritten; these laws have affected civil, business, corporate, tax, criminal and regulatory regimes in a significant manner. The characteristic feature of FATF-related legislation is that it has linked civil and regulatory laws with criminal laws of the country.
The Asia Pacific Group (APG) of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) issued a Mutual Evaluation Report (MER) on Pakistan in October 2019. It is an interesting read for anyone looking to understand governance in Pakistan. It maps the trajectory of policy making and its implementation between the federal and provincial governments. It also expounds…
The latest judgment of the Supreme Court of Pakistan in case of Ghulam Hussain vs. the State[1] is an attempt to interpret the codified definition of ‘terrorism’ in Pakistan’s anti-terrorism law. Before entering into the legalese of the judgement itself, it is imperative to ask this question: Why should the Supreme Court of Pakistan venture to interpret the definition of ‘terrorism’?
Brief overview of Pakistan’s Criminal Justice System and Role of Federal and Provincial Governments within the purview of Constitution of Pakistan.
