CHENNAI: To shatter into pieces the saying that ‘once a criminal, always a criminal’, a division bench of the Madras High Court has constituted a panel, led by a former DGP R Nataraj as its chairman, to revamp the criminal justice delivery system in the State.
The proverb is the result of the present system prevailing in the State. The fundamental purpose of criminal justice delivery system is for reformation, rehabilitation and re-integration of the convict into society. If an accused is pushed to the extreme by this system, where he finds that even if he wants to turn a new leaf in his life, this system will not allow him, he will rather surrender to his fate and turn out to be a hardened criminal. A welfare State can never stoop to such a level, Justice N Anand Venkatesh said on Wednesday.
The recommendations of the panel can be put to discussion and implemented by adding it to the rule book. ‘Let this State restore the old glory and become a role model for all others to follow,” the judge said.
The judge was passing further interim orders on a bail application of two accused in a case pending in Tiruchengode in Namakkal district.
The other members of the ‘heterogeneous committee’ are: former SP P V Sithannan, senior advocate N R Elango, Banyan director K V Kishore Kumar and DCP (Anna Nagar) M Sudhakar. The committee should submit a report within eight weeks on the reforms that can be brought into practice for reformation, rehabilitation and re-integration of the convict/accused persons into society and the best practices to be followed for improving the quality of investigation. This effort is to create a healthy criminal justice system in the State, the judge said.
The judge noted that statistics published in the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) revealed an outrageously sorry-state-of-affairs in the criminal justice system. It needs revamping because of the poor conviction rate in serious offences and the working system of the police. The data provided by DGP gives sufficient indication to this effect.
“Reformation can be brought forth only by changing our attitude towards criminals. Once this attitude is developed, the requirement to register FIRs for statistical purposes, to justify passing unnecessary detention orders, will all automatically come down. Prison reforms, improving the role played by probation officers, ensuring first time offenders rehabilitation/reformation and removing the criminal taboo, effective use of neuroscience to identify the psychological/brain related impacts which pushes a person to commit a crime...” the judge said.