In 2019, RSIL consolidated its decades of expertise and know-how in criminal justice reform and capacity building in Pakistan into a single dedicated research unit – the Centre for Criminal Justice Reform and Capacity Building or C3.

The Centre amalgamates RSIL’s capacities in research and analysis, policy formulation, legislative drafting, governance and administrative strengthening, statistical analysis, technological innovation, and capacity building to provide contextualised and evidence-based solutions to criminal justice challenges in Pakistan. Cognizant of the need to understand crime and the State’s response to it through a multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary lens, the Centre routinely engages with a range of experts and civil society organizations in the fields of criminology, psychology, gender, and human rights. The Centre also works in close collaboration with RSIL’s Centre for Human Rights and ensures that all its proposals, interventions, and activities accord with and promote fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution of Pakistan as well as the State’s international human rights obligations.

Capacity Building

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.

National Observatory on Crime & Criminal Justice

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

Partners

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.