Dimensions of Crime and Criminal Justice System: Contemporary Issues and Challenges

Keywords: effective legal aid system, prison reforms, criminal component, legal framework on
prison reforms.

The question, “ what is a crime?” occupies a central place in any discussion on criminal law but
still, it’s a task which so far has not been satisfactorily being accomplished by any legislator,
judiciary, lawyers, and commentators. This is because of the changing notion of crime. This
research paper discusses the present situation of criminal justice system in India in which justice
delivery mechanisms are hijacked by some goons and a conglomerate of goondas and also talks
about the two adversaries i.e. the prosecution and defense out of which criminal justice emerges
in which judicial magistrate acts as an impartial referee.

The criminal justice is a maze of agencies and complex processes which not only includes police
who investigate crimes and attorneys who prosecute crimes but also has three imperative
elements which include law enforcement, courts, and corrections and also minimize crime, and
impose penalties for the commission of crimes.

Instead of asking, ‘how can we keep bad people out of society, we need to be asking, “How do
we bring changed people back?” Positioned at the very end of the criminal justice system,
prisons and prisoners get minimal attention. From the earliest time, a well-organized system of
prisons is known to have existed in India. “It is not prison buildings, but what goes on inside
them, that need change.”Mode of punishment and mode for punishment are the two paradigms
by which the concept of “prison reforms” is the domain of the first paradigm and these two
paradigms are mutually exclusive.

In most of the countries around the globe, people are dissatisfied and also frustrated with the
quality of service they are getting from the grassroots. The system of criminal justice needs
drastic restructuring, beyond cosmetics, in order to make policing more professional and more
acceptable to the common man.