Fair and effective administration of Justice is the cornerstone of a free society and an essential component in public confidence in the Institution of Government. Fairness in administration of justice is envisaged in Article 21 of the Constitution that mandates trial of a citizen in accordance with procedure established by Law. It is imperative that the procedure should be transparent and capable of achieving fairness to the individual.

Many times an analysis of the functioning of the criminal justice system tends to focus on the subordinate criminal courts, but a comprehensive analysis of the system must start from the Parliament and the State Legislatures, which through statutes create offences : there is hardly a statute that does not have a part dealing with "Offences and Penalties", then we have the Executive - primarily the police which has a dual responsibility to prevent crime, and to investigate crime. Later come the lawyers, for prosecution & defence counsel, thereafter, come the trial courts, followed by the Appellate Courts (the High Courts & The Supreme Court of India). Each of these has an important role to play in the Criminal Justice Administration System.

It would be worthwhile to take a look at the present day crime statistics between 1999-2008. On an average, about 51 lakh cognizable crimes were registered each year in the States & Union Territories of which one-third of these were Indian Penal Code (IPC) crimes and the rest offences were under special & local laws.

Under the Code of Criminal Procedure, as it exists today, the investigation of all criminal offences is done by the police. The pendency of criminal cases in the subordinate courts has been slow and the effective strength of Judges in subordinate courts is only about 12,524 for which courts are able to dispose of, on an average, only 27% of the pending criminal cases each year.

In India, not even 45% of people charged with serious IPC offences are ultimately convicted (42.3% in 2007). In other countries, like the United Kingdom, France, the United States of America and Japan, the conviction rate for similar offences is over 90%. In actual practice, the problem of crime is much more serious than the official figures show. It has been estimated that one-third to one-half of all serious crimes are not reported due to a variety of reasons, including intimidation and harassment of the victims.

Of course, figures and statistics of convictions or acquittals or disposal of cases or pendency do not reflect the efficacy of the system. It is necessary to recreate the very crime, the investigation, the trial, the lawyering, the judgement and the appellate process to know what happened through the system.

Analytical Models
The criminal justice system has been viewed by jurists mainly as the justice-oriented model or the due process model and the crime control model. In the crime control model, the criminal process is seen as a screening process in which each successive stage investigation arrest, post-arrest investigation, trial, trial or entry of plea, conviction, and punishment are involved, on other hand, there is a value system underlies that the crime control model is based on the proposition that repression of criminal conduct is the most important function to be performed by the criminal process.

Today, the failure of law enforcement to bring criminal conduct under tight control is viewed as leading to the breakdown of public order and hence discomfort to the freedom of people. The Law-abiding citizen then becomes the victim of all sorts of unjustifiable invasions of interests.

It is important to note that the control model operates on the premise that provides quantitative results and are sufficient by themselves, to prove that the criminal justice system is functioning efficiently.

The core values underlying the due process model are liberty of individuals and presumption of innocence of the accused. Since liberty and freedom are the important principles of any democratic society and the criminal justice system seeks to take away from accused individuals this very freedom, this model seeks to impart necessary and suitable checks and balances, to provide freedom. The process model questions that since the criminal justice system rests ultimately upon the decisions and predilections of human beings, errors will arise. Errors and abuse only can be removed by formal adversarial hearing accompanied by procedural safeguard.

The Malimath Committee planned to introduce a new preamble into the Criminal Procedure Code, ‘the search for truth’, assuming that a criminal trial must advance the “search for truth” and at the same time satisfy the society that it by “just and fair” trial, otherwise the principles enshrined in the constitution would be hampered.

India is composite of the due process model and the crime control model. The endeavour should be to achieve a balanced level of functioning, where everyone is respected. There has been a consistent effort by the courts in India to make the two approaches correspond with each other, an act of maintaining balance between justice and crime control.

There has been a great deal of debate on the various systems of justice. It must be made clear at the outset that under Indian Law, inquisitorial system would be unconstitutional. It would completely militate against the principle of separation of powers, which is a part of the Indian democracy and constitutional framework. It would be impossible for a judge to distance himself from an investigation. It is only because of that separation that there can often be an acquittal of the innocent.

Right to silence of the accused as an inviolable rule has been the subject matter of much controversy. The accused is a good source of information, perhaps the best source of the commissioning of the offence, but this source is not tapped for fear of infringing the right to silence guaranteed by Article 20(3). The Article does not prohibit admissions on confessions made without inducement, threat or promise. It does not bar the accused from voluntarily offering himself to be examined as a witness.

Presumption of innocence
The presumption of innocence is a fundamental principle of our criminal justice system. The system of burden of proof is in fact relevant to support the presumption of innocence. A person is presumed to be innocent until proved guilty. The protection of the innocent is the very basis of the Constitutional Articles 20 and 21.

Hostile witnesses
The Criminal Law (Amendment) bill, 2003 was introduced in the Rajya Sabha in August, 2003, to implement measures designed to prevent the evil of witnesses turning hostile by inserting new sections, to ensure that evidence of material witnesses was to be recorded by the magistrate in certain cases, where investigation is of an offence punishable with death or imprisonment for seven years or more.

Witness protection
A witness in a criminal trial plays a very important role in determining the fate of the case. The Law needs to protect the witnesses from threats of any kind from any source so that the witnesses feel secure and the Law can take its course for deciding the fate of the criminals.

Contributed by :
The Research Wing - Law College Dehradun