ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court ordered Inspectors General of Prisons and home secretaries of the four provinces on Tuesday to submit reports on conditions in different jails and suggestions to improve them, particularly health facilities. The reports should also highlight measures being taken to improve pathetic conditions.

The order was issued by a two-judge bench consisting of Justice Amir Hani Muslim and Justice Dost Muhammad Khan which had taken up a case on a suo motu about pathetic condition of prisoners, particularly women, in jails all over the country.

The order came against the backdrop of a report prepared by the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan (LJCP) in August last year pointing fingers at federal and provincial ombudsmen offices for their failure to implement their mandate and authority to address and rectify systematic failures that resulted in maladministration at the cost of prison inmates’ sufferings.

The LJCP had been mandated by the Supreme Court to meet federal and provincial ombudsmen and officials of other departments and submit a detailed report in this regard.

In its order of May 28, 2015, the Supreme Court had held that it was not sufficient for ombudsmen offices to just address individual complaints, rather they must address systematic failures that were the root cause of maladministration and formulate and enforce standards of good governance as had been envisaged by the law.

The Supreme Court had also regretted that there was a near complete failure of the regulatory framework in relation to the prison conditions and that no official or organisation appeared to have been effective in regulating the implementation of prison laws and rules to ensure prisoners’ welfare as was required under the law.

On Tuesday the court recalled that prisons in Pakistan were constructed during the British era but regretted that the government had failed to set up more despite the fact that jails were overcrowded and their population was increasing with the passage of time.

It was the job of monitoring judges of provincial high courts to examine pathetic conditions of jails, the court observed.

Additional Advocate General of Punjab Razak A. Mirza told the court that there were 35 jails and the provincial government had allocated funds for reconstructing five more jails. Besides, he said, five jails would be renovated next year.

Justice Dost Muhammad Khan recalled that when he was the Chief Justice of the Peshawar High Court a delegation of foreign donors had offered him during a meeting to build a high-security prison in Malakand, but they were advised to contact the provincial government. So far no such jail had been built in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the judge lamented.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Home Secretary conceded that prisons in the province were crowded as the prison population had tripled, but the government was planning to build more jails in Mardan and expand the Peshawar prison.

Both law officers from Sindh and Balochistan informed the court that no plans for construction of more jails in the two provinces were under consideration of their respective governments.

Published in Dawn, September 16th, 2015

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