The Indian Criminal Justice System is considered to be one of the most critical and overwhelming systems in the world, India is the most populous country in the world. It is not a surprising fact the crime rate in India is also one of the highest occurring in the world. Still, the resources in India while dealing with the issue are limited only, there are a plethora of pending cases in the courts of India and it is not an easy task to deal with those and that's why the Indian Criminal Justice System faces several challenges.

The criminal justice system in India remains troubled with persistent issues such as the acute backlog crisis, vacancies, poor accessibility, sub-optimal investigation process, instances of human rights violations during custody, etc, taking note of the significance of speedy and prompt delivery of justice in a society, it becomes paramount to understand what exactly constitutes the criminal justice system and how has it evolved?

What are the fault lines in India's CJS that hinder the efficient delivery of justice? What steps have been taken to strengthen India's CJS? In this article, we will attempt to answer these questions.

The Impact Of Covid-19:

The pandemic has revealed critical gaps in India's Criminal Justice System in various forms: overcrowded prisons filled with undertrials becoming COVID- 19 hotspots, the police being over-burdened with additional responsibilities, and restrictive functioning of the courts causing further delays in the delivery of justice.

Simultaneously, the country also saw transformative steps as the Supreme Court passed a detailed order to decongest prisons and directed the police to not arrest the accused unless necessary in crimes sentenced with less than seven years of imprisonment. Meanwhile, COVID-19 also acted as a catalyst in India's efforts towards the digitization of the judicial process, prompting measures such as e-filling, virtual hearings in courts, and publication of draft vision documents for 3rd phase of e-courts.

What Is The Criminal Justice System

The CJS refers to the structure, functions, and decisions or processes of formal agencies that deal with crime prevention, investigation, prosecution, punishment, and correction. In essence, CJS is an instrument of social control.

Every society creates amongst itself a boundary for acceptable behaviour which is dictated by the law. For example, practicing violence does not come under acceptable behavior and thus it is prohibited by the law. By helping enforce the law, the CJS enables the society as a collective to ensure that acceptable behavior from all its participants i.e., victims, criminals, witnesses, and the society at large. But how should the system approach the delivery of criminal justice? The approach of the system is dependent upon the notion of justice that the system holds. As far as contemporary law is concerned, criminal justice is approached in the following ways:

1. Deterrence: The logic of this theory is that if the imposition of criminal punishment deters people from committing crimes, then the general public can enjoy a greater sense of safety and security.
2. Retribution: According to this theory, every individual who has committed a wrongful act has done so based on a rational and conscious decision, and thus justice would be to provide them with punishment in proportion to the severity of the crime.
3. Incapacitation: This theory propagates the prevention of future crime by disabling or restricting the offender's liability, movements, or ability to commit a further wrong. Here, justice is being served by pre-emptive curtailment of actions of certain elements for protecting society at large. It includes imprisonment, curfews, house arrest, and electronic monitoring.

Traditional Approaches To Justice:

Traditionally, local village councils or headpersons were responsible for the delivery of justice, and that continues to be the case in several remote tribal areas of the country. Their approach is tailored around the socio-economic context of the region. Like in northern India, Nari adalats, or informal women's courts use mediation, negotiation, conciliation, and fines in cases of violence against women as tools to reconcile family relationships. Tradition plays an important role in helping to fill the gaps in CJS. This has also been acknowledged by the Indian Constitution with special provisions like Article 371A but these systems are not a substitute to CJS which has collectively evolved and refined for centuries.

The Fault Line In India's Cjs That Hinders Efficient
Delivery Of Justice
Police
The rule of law enshrined in the IPC, 1861 was more about the sovereignty of the British state than the rights of the people of India. Further, the IPC as well as the CrPC, since their inception, have been subjected to a minimal number of amendments as a result of which they fall short of capturing changes that have taken place in the complexion of crime and criminal justice dispensation, such as advancement in forensic sciences, focus on reformative and rehabilitative justices, etc.

• Extradition treaties: India's success rate in extraditing fugitives is abysmally low; only one in every three fugitives is successfully extradited to India.
   
• Resource scarcity: Currently, 192 police personnel per lakh population against the UN recommendation of 222 police personnel is used in India. The police machinery is still using obsolete weapons, and there is also a shortage of police vehicles, which compromises the swiftness of action and increases the response time of the police force. Many police stations in the country have neither telephones nor wireless sets to communicate. The police Telecommunication Network (POLNET), which is used in crime investigation and transmission of crime-related data, is non-functional in certain states.
   
• Recruitment: The recruitment and training process of lower-level police personnel, especially from the lowest level to sub-inspector level, is mainly focused on physical strength, while other more essential skills like forensics, law, cyber-crime, and financial frauds are either ignored or put on the back burner.

Courts:
There is an unprecedented pile-up of over 38 million cases across courts in the country. The present judge-to-population ratio in India is at abysmal 17 judges/million. There are about 5,000 vacancies in lower courts and more than around 419 posts lie vacant against a sanctioned strength of 1,080 in High Courts. This has been happening mainly due to the lengthy and complex process of appointment of judges in state government. \
Women judges constitute only 27.6% of the total judges in lower judiciary and a mere 10% of total judges in high courts.

This has been happening mainly due to lengthy and complex process of appointment and " procedural" delays on the part of state governments. The possibility of promotion of lower courts judges to High courts is very less. A disproportionately high number of judges are selected as direct appointment to high courts, compared to elevation from the sub-ordinate courts.

Steps Taken So Far To Strengthen India's CJs:

The ministry of Home Affairs has constituted a national-level committee headed by Professor Ranbir Singh for reform in criminal law, to modernise and reform the substantive criminal law and to align them with constitutional morality and aspirations. To streamline, re-imagine and re-invigorate the laws of criminal procedure and to align them with constitutional morality, social aspirators, and best global practices. The use of information technology in the judicial domain started with the preparation of "National Policy And Action Plan for Implementation of ICT in the Indian Judiciary" by the e-committee of the Supreme Court of India.
 

• Supace (Supreme Court's portal for assistance in court's efficiency)
  • Can identify and extract various objective facts from the data, such as date, time, place of occurrence of event, etc.
     
• Suvaas translates judgments and other legal documents from English into nine vernacular dialects, and vice-versa.
   
• Inter-Operable Criminal Justice System: It is an initiative of the e-committee of the SC to enable seamless transfer of data and information among different pillars of the criminal justice system, like courts, police, jails, and forensic science laboratories, from one platform.

Conclusion:
The overall purpose of any criminal justice system is to prevent crime and create peaceful, law-abiding societies. The CJS in India has seen a spate of reforms and recommendations most recent being the digitization of courts ( in view of the COVID-19 pandemic) which has significantly brought down the costs of litigation and increased the ease of filing paperwork. However, it has been unsuccessfully in delivering speedy and prompt justice to people and guaranteeing the certainty of penalization to perpetrators of crime. CJS is an integral part of the democratic setup, therefore it is imperative that comprehensive steps are taken to make the system more effective. It is thus the responsibility of legislators and all the stakeholders to embark on the task of strengthening the system with a holistic and meticulous approach so as to reinforce faith of all concerned in the system.