Our criminal machine remains mired in a sea of old, colonial-generation trapping. Bangladesh bears the legacy of a system of administration of justice from the British colonial rulers, who regularly changed the Mughal machine of management of justice, which became more often than not based on Islamic ideals.
Colonial legacies consisting of Penal Code 1860, Police Act 1861, Evidence Act 1872, Code of Criminal Procedure 1898, and Jail Code are still under pressure in Bangladesh with the best peripheral amendments. The ethos of constitutional law, the precedents of the Supreme Court, worldwide treaty duty, and enactment of unique laws also impact the administration of crook justice in Bangladesh.
Although the enactment of colonial law has been considered a prime achievement in aligning the then familiar criminal rules with not unusual regulation ideas, it has now grown to be essential to make fundamental adjustments and additions within the criminal justice system.
It is frequently said that the modern law of Bangladesh remains in large part colonial in nature and spirit. According to Akbar Ali Khan, as a result of the introduction of the lawyer-centric adverse device, felony reforms added by the British in this region became out to be “isomorphic mimicry,” which looked liked western counterpart, however, was a device of exploitation for the bad, marginal, dissidents, and disadvantaged companies.
The acutely opposed procedure, with the passive position of judges, advocacy of legal professionals, strict mode of law enforcement corporations, and the imposition of excessive imprisonment, changed into introduced by way of the British rulers. Shaheen Malik rightly discovered that the cause for punishment turned into recognized to be deterrence, and a new regulation-making method of the British colonial rulers became, on the whole, irrational, random, and erratic.
Though Bangladesh is heading in the direction of a few monetary accelerations in the course of its journey, it has nonetheless ended up hostage to many governance issues regarding yawning financial disparity and effectiveness of national institutions.
All these issues have been allegedly accentuated using the mode and method of the justice area officials. But, in reality, the overall situation of the administration of criminal justice can also more often than not be depicted as coercive, dilatory, time-eating, and adversarial, with acute arrears of instances at extraordinary tiers of courts.
However, the deterioration in excellent justice is arguably an awful lot starker than the mounting backlog of cases. Though over time, some detached and 1/2-hearted endeavors have been made to cast off the procedural trappings and ensure powerful justice, the crisis in the machine of justice is infinitely complicated.
It is often alleged that lawlessness within the sorts of impunity and abuses of the coercive authority of the kingdom has not only been tremendously effective been tremendous but also systematic within country-centric formal justice arrangements. More so, many crimes also stay unreported to the attention of law enforcement.
Most of the criminal law, methods, institutions, and concepts that developed at some stage in the British period (1757-1947) nevertheless govern the functioning of the crook justice system. Alongside the consistent increase of a series of unique legal guidelines within the Seventies and afterward, some palliative reforms have additionally been initiated to ease the strain in the crook procedure.
However, the proper utility of criminal regulation can be puzzling in terms of welfare and effectiveness. Perhaps disenfranchised sections, inclusive of ladies and the disadvantaged, undergo the burn of abuse of the legal procedure.
At times, the pro-lively position of the judiciary and private prison aid organizations in protecting the rights of women and unfortunate sufferers is commendable.