Why in News?
Thiseditorial highlights the dangers of a centralised database for justice system
Syllabus—GS2: Issues related to Criminal Justice System
- A sobering reality of crime is that it does not respect jurisdictional boundaries. And unfortunately, many police agencies utilize databases that only contain information compiled by their own organization.
- As a result, a crime series that affects several towns within a few miles of each other may go undetected because there is no collective awareness of a regional crime problem.
- Conversely, when agencies within a region use a shared system for their records, efficiency is improved and crimefighting capabilities are enhanced. In effect, a commonsense approach to using technology becomes an effective force multiplier.
SC’s e-Committee
- Recently SC’s e-committee headed by Justice D Y Chandrachud published a draft document digitizing the criminal justice system.
- The main aim is to integrate digital technologies in courts to enhance judicial efficiency.
- The vision is to put in place an interoperable digital architecture that facilitates easy data-sharing among all pillars of the criminal justice system.
About Interoperable Criminal Justice System (ICJS): –
- The Interoperable Criminal Justice System (ICJS), launched in 2019, is set to be fully operational, and will replace the existing need-based physical exchange of information.
- It will integrate existing centralised data systems such as the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS), e-prisons and e-courts, promising “seamless exchange of live data” among these branches.
- Critics have raised privacy concerns, given the absence of data protection laws, and questioned the implications of the data being housed in the home ministry for judicial independence.
Concerns:
- The main concern is privacy due to the absence of data protection laws in India.
- There is also the concern of implications of the data being housed in the home ministry for judicial independence.
- The major issue is of a neglected danger that this seamless exchange likely to whitewash the biased & illegal process of data creation.
- In other words, it can possibly hamper the objectivity & neutrality of technology.
- It will have a huge impact on certain tribes classified as Habitual Offenders.
Habitual Offenders & Central Database:
- Habitual offenders are historically maintained a register of persons belongs to certain communities like VimuktaJanjatis that have been criminalized by the British through the Criminal Tribe Act 1871.
- For colonial rulers, Caste System offered the rationale to identify & branding of communities as HOs that resulted in extensive surveillance & intrusive policing.
- This has been sustained post-independence through state laws allowing the police to maintain records of lives & movements of the communities.
- The gravest injustice of being labeled as a HO is that it entirely hinges on police suspicion & discretion that are based on caste prejudices.
- The register also includes juveniles that contravene the principles enshrined in the Juvenile Justice Act.
- The creation of permanent digital databases based on biased offline databases with no oversight that utilizes ambiguous & outdated provisions is grave injustice & illegal.
- For years, the Hos registers were hidden inside specific police stations & shred with other stations when required.
- With CCTNS, police used digitized data for crime & criminal mapping & predictive policing.
- The existence of HO registers is a ready refuge for the police both while looking for a person to pin a crime on as well as manufacturing one.
Challenges ahead: –
- Before the interoperable system, the accused has given a right to challenge the correctness of the record, but now the interoperable system creates a potential for the police information to be used to the detriment of accused persons without their knowledge.
- The e-committee’s vision to integrate all existing data systems to make ICJS one expansive centralized system would be feed with biased data of habitual offenders.
Way Forward:
- Even if caste-informed biases of data are taken away, we still need to consider the risks of centralized, interoperable & permanent digital databases on privacy & individual liberties.
- Efficiency & Digitization cannot recede the rights & dignities of marginalized individuals who are often the subjects of the Indian criminal justice system.
Question: –
Discuss the privacy concerns raised over the judicial independencegiven the absence of data protection laws. Illustrate how the interoperable digital architecture will facilitate “easy” data-sharing among all pillars of the criminal justice system — the police, prosecutors, prisons and courts.