‘Strategic initiatives’ urged to improve law, order

Islamabad : A draft position paper on ‘Police Reforms’ suggests urgent ‘strategic initiatives’ to further improve law and order besides prevention of incidents of violence at different levels.

The draft position paper has been prepared under a pilot project of ‘Police Awam Saath Saath (PASS),’ which would be presented to Senators, MNAs and MPAs for more effective legislation and capacity building of the law enforcement department. The paper contains recommendations of parliamentary groups, formed by the Sustainable Social Development Organization (SSDO) in collaboration with the United States Institute for Peace (USIP), and police officers after a series of consultative meetings, according to a news release issued here on Sunday.

Four parliamentary groups, consisting of members from National Assembly and Senate, Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assemblies, were formed to bring reforms in the police department by introducing modern research mechanisms and making necessary legislation. It says that mobilizing lawmakers for the institutional reforms were vital for a more vibrant judicial system, which had a key role in ensuring rule of law in the country. The paper suggested urgent ‘strategic initiatives’ to further improve law and order besides prevention of incidents of violence at different levels.

The paper addressed the important issue of differentiating between “police reforms and policing reforms,” clarifying that police reforms were linked with organizational aspects of the department, while policing reforms were related to functions or service delivery aspects like case registration, investigation methods, bail and remand laws, trial procedures and handling of offenders and juveniles.

The service delivery issues discussed in the paper focused on the topics of Women in Police, Police Investigation, Community Policing, and Information Technology in Police. About ‘Women and Police’, the recommendations from parliamentarians and police officials were mostly about categorizing women officials in the police department and crimes against women. They asked to ensure the working of women police stations as functional units of police organizations with increased induction of the staff, retention and training of women officials in the department.

Women parliamentarians strongly recommended that crimes against women should be professionally measured through investigation by women police officers as it would help minimize communication gap and increase empathy. They also asked for increased coordination for evidence collection to carve out strategies in order to deal with criminals through reliable databases.

The draft paper also stressed for functional specialization, standardization, renewal of investigation resources and methods alongside accountability for defective investigation, evidence based arrests, police prosecution and forensic cooperation.

The parliamentarians stressed for the recorded rule-based management of the cases, only to be conducted and supervised by investigators rigorously trained in police investigation, forensic, human rights compliance, and legal matters. They asked to develop a separate and specialized investigation wing of police stations to ensure more focused investigative measures to provide relief to the victims and increase in investigation budget, decentralization along with a professional audit and making disbursements easy and fully accounted for.

They said police should be bound only to make evidence-based arrests with few exceptions, which would result in lessening the judiciary’s burden and improve investigation quality with better conviction rate in cases sent for prosecution. Community policing, the recommendations stated, must be institutionalized through a clear and rule-based mandate and a system for selection and removal, tenure to ward off any political and personal considerations besides compatibility through integrating initiatives into the larger criminal justice system. The paper also carried recommendations to move from digitization to digitalization, ensure cyber security, data privacy for citizens’ dignity and integrity of police organization, declare the primacy of electronic evidence relevant and admissible under the law of evidence.