Prisoners Are Too ‘Victims’ of the Criminal Justice System. Can They Have an Idea of ‘Fair Access to Justice’?

AuthorPraveen Kumar,Anand Kumar Banshkar,Shubhendu Shekhar,KM Pushpa Rani
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/25166069221134215
Published date01 October 2022
Date01 October 2022
Subject MatterOriginal Articles
Prisoners Are Too
‘Victims’ of the Criminal
Justice System. Can
They Have an Idea
of ‘Fair Access
to Justice’?
Praveen Kumar1, Anand Kumar Banshkar2,
Shubhendu Shekhar2 and KM Pushpa Rani3
Abstract
Injustice to society is antithetic to social order. The strength of the criminal jus-
tice system comes from a cluster of police, prison and court. This article portrays
the work of providing free access to socio-legal aid and socio-legal counselling
services, to the marginalized undertrial prisoners who had been imprisoned for
years despite the ‘due process of law’ and the lack of proper legal representation.
Thus, they are too ‘victims’ of this poor criminal justice system. The prime objec-
tive of the paper is to create awareness about the free socio-legal aid services
and to advocate how prisoners are too victims. The paper broadly scrutinizes
the issues, problems and ill effects of the criminal justice system. Additionally, it
also limns solutions that had been practically implemented and had successively
brought out affirmative results and implications.
Keywords
Prisoners, criminal justice system, social worker, legal service authority victim,
free legal aid, rehabilitation
Introduction
One of the prominent idiosyncrasies of the ‘law’ is to be equal to everybody.
Howsoever, in reality, it had become a misnomer. The prevailing criminal justice
system (CJS) in India is an assortment of police, court and prison. Duly authorized
to dispense justice to the society at large, criminology had extensively analysed the
Original Article
Journal of Victimology
and Victim Justice
5(2) 166–180, 2022
2022 Rajiv Gandhi National
University of Law
Reprints and permissions:
in.sagepub.com/journals-permissions-india
DOI: 10.1177/25166069221134215
journals.sagepub.com/home/vvj
1 Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Delhi, India
2 Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India
3 Central University of Jharkhand, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India
Corresponding author:
Praveen Kumar, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Delhi, India.
E-mail: praveen.cjf@gmail.com

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