COMMUNITY JUSTICE IN

INDIA

PMAS-Arid Agriculture University

Rawalpindi
Presented To Dr Mazhar Hussain Bhutta

Presented By Sajjad Khan 19-Arid-1973

Zahid Hussain 19-Arid-1983

Yasrab Ali Shah 18-Arid-1945

M Junaid Tahir 19-Arid-1963

Kashif Iqbal Malik 19-Arid-1957

Waqar Jillani 19-Arid-1982

M.Sc Criminology –3rd Semester

OUTLINE

 Introduction
 Traditional vs. Community Justice
 Community Justice in India
 Strength
 Weaknesses
INTRODUCTION
• Community justice broadly refers to all variants of crime prevention and
justice activities that explicitly include the community in their processes
and set the enhancement of community quality of life as a goal

• In a community justice model, priority is given to the community,

enhancing its responsibility for social control while building its capacity
to achieve this and other outcomes relevant to the quality of community
life

• Restoring victims and communities, strengthening normative

standards, and effectively reintegrating offenders in order to promoting
public safety and the quality of community life

Cont…
• Community justice focuses explicitly on the location of
justice activities at the local level and concentrates on
community outcomes

• Community justice is rooted in the actions that citizens,

community organizations, and the criminal justice system can
take to control crime and social disorder

• This ethic has begun to take hold in each of the three main
components of criminal justice: police, courts, and corrections
.
TRADITIONAL VS COMMUNITY JUSTICE

• We know traditional justice as the 'get arrested, go to trial, get

sentenced to prison' approach.

• Traditional justice is focused on the power asserted by both

government and law enforcement agencies to punish offenders.

• It doesn't focus on the community or the victim.

• This in turn can lead crime victims and other members of the
community to feel estranged from law enforcement and to
question their sincerity.

Cont…
• Community justice, on the other hand, focuses not just on
punishment but on underlying issues of criminal behavior, such
as:

 How was a person victimized and how can they be

compensated for loss?
 How can we rehabilitate the offender?
 How can a sense of security be restored within the
community?
 What can be done to prevent the offender from committing
similar acts in the future?
THE ACT OF BALANCING INTERESTS

Offender Victim

Community

State
FEATURES

• Who has broken the law?

• What is the harm?
• Who is affected by the harm?
1st Victim, 2nd community and 3rd family of offender.
• Who is responsible for repairing the harm?
• Repairing harm with or without punishment.
COMMUNITY JUSTICE IN INDIA
• In the past, people relied heavily on the Panchayat because
official institutions of justice were far away, and were corrupt
and oriented toward physical punishment, while local justice
was more personal and directed toward peace-making.

• Their roles were comprehensive, the functional equivalents of

policing, prosecuting, judging, and correcting.

• Other functions included general village administration, making

decisions affecting village life, working in cooperation with
officials from outside the village, and collecting contributions for
the maintenance of the village temple, water tanks, and roads.
• India is in transition between tradition and modernity, impacted
by its colonial history, which has consequences for its social
order and social control efforts.

• Community policing, considered to be a new mode of social

control, has actually been an important role of village
Panchayat since ancient times.

• These community councils of five or more elders also served

as courts in settling disputes and as governmental bodies in
administration of village affairs.
• Usually village elders were selected from the community’s
various kin groups and castes, among whom they lived,
or from major streets of the community, with an
orientation to prevent conflicts or settle disputes at their
onset.

• When more serious conflicts did arise, the Panchayat,

functioning as a court, would process the dispute with a
focus on reestablishing village harmony and peace .
• The primary objective of social reintegration programs is to
provide offenders with the assistance and supervision that they
may need to desist from crime, to successfully reintegrate into
the community and to avoid a relapse into criminal behaviour.

• In the State of Orissa, India, the Biju Patnaik Open-Air Ashram

has engaged prisoners in important humanitarian work;
prisoners have aided in distributing relief materials to flooded
villages. This kind of community involvement can help the
community recognize the potential for successful reintegration,
especially as they may see prisoners as stakeholders in the
community who are willing to participate in positive ways.
• Community policing programs, transplanted from the West, have been
introduced in some Indian urban communities in recent times under the
auspices and authority of the official police stations, and some have
been tried in rural areas as well

• For example, in some regions of Tamil Nadu, a Friends of the Police

program has been instituted by the police with a primary focus on
improving perceptions of the police, and gaining help from citizens in
solving crimes

• In Andhra Pradesh, the police select citizens to form Maithri

Committees to help maintain law and order, and even to settled
disputes
STRENGTH
• India has been restructuring its political and economic systems based on modern
democratic and capitalistic ideologies, as have many traditional societies with
past colonial and autocratic regimes. This transition includes a mix of traditional
and modern values, which are affecting notions of justice and the Panchayat.

• Most villages in India do not have police stations of their own; an outside police
station usually controls several villages. In this regard, cooperation between the
police and the Panchayat elders and headmen is necessary to maintain order.

• On the other hand, the police may support modern laws, while the panchayat may
uphold traditional practices; e.g., a panchayat approved a child marriage, and
individuals opposed to it called in the police, who prevented it from happening.

• The police also seek expedient methods to resolve issues, such as inter-caste
conflicts and violence, by arresting individuals whom they think might escalate
conflicts
WEAKNESSES
• The success of these community policing programs is mixed, as some
members of these citizen groups have abused their positions for personal
gains and to promote their group interests in divided communities.

• Some scholars suggest the programs have for the most part failed because
they are under police rather than community control, and the police continue to
resent images characteristic of colonial policing, which involve show of
authority, practice of torture and brutality, and evocation of fear,

• Such police qualities have created fear and suspicion on the part of the public,
which led to people distancing themselves from the police and from members
of citizen police groups, and not to genuinely cooperating with them.

• Additionally, the authoritarian police mode is not a proper fit for the
democratic environment of the times.
Cont…
• In recent times panchayat elders in many villages are unable to exercise
these order maintenance and social control functions, as traditional
Panchayats have weakened or disappeared altogether due to the impact of
with the expansion of the official police and court systems

• Some villages in India have used traditions to preserve their Panchayat, in

spite of challenges posed by modernization. The Indian government has also
instituted a modern version of the panchayat under its Nyaya (Justice)
Panchayat, to strengthen local self-governance and control, based on
democratic and inclusive representation.

• As with experiments in community policing, these do not function well, as

their decisions are often forged in favor of upper caste and class interests,
and many have become defunct
 n k s
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