The Committee for the Welfare of Prisoners (CWP) was notified in 2004 by the Home Department, Government of Sindh. Through this Committee, the government was desirous of establishing a legal aid program for underprivileged female undertrial prisoners in the Karachi Women’s Prison. The Committee was initially notified with three members and a limited mandate with a focus on legal representation before courts. The objective was to improve access to justice for female prisoners in Karachi and this stemmed from the premise that free legal aid is a fundamental right, as well as the right to fair trial and representation before the courts. As chair of the Committee, I would visit the Women Prison on a daily basis holding meetings with prisoners who were unable to engage a lawyer. I would interview each prisoner to assess their financial standing and strengths of their case. My wife, who is a retired doctor, would accompany me to screen and treat patients for scabies and other infectious diseases. Very soon, I realized that only the poorest of the poor remained entangled in unending legal proceedings.
The committee started working with volunteers, fresh law graduates and young lawyers who were yearning for criminal trial experience. The Committee would train each of them and, very soon, the reach of the services was expanded to cover the nearby facility accommodating juveniles; the Youth Offenders Industrial School in Karachi. With the passage of more lenient laws favoring the earlier release of women from prisons, female prisons across the province suddenly became decongested. This provided an opportunity to utilize the Committee’s manpower and resources to other categories of beneficiaries in the prison system albeit on a pilot basis. With time, the model scaled and the Committee’s terms of reference were expanded to include adult male facilities. The Government of Sindh remained committed to ensuring legal aid was provided to needy prisoners. The main beneficiaries of the legal aid service would remain those who were poor and were implicated for the first time in a petty offense.
From 2011 onwards, the Committee expanded its operations through engaging teams of dedicated lawyers that were now visiting and accessing the Malir District Prison and Central Prison in Karachi and started working similarly in prisons in Hyderabad, Larkana, and Sukkur. From 2014 onwards, with the support of institutional donors, prisons were covered in Ghotki, Nawabshah, Nausheroferoze, Shikarpur, Khairpur, and most recently in 2018, the prisons in Dadu and Mirpurkhas have also been included. The model was simple; lawyers were deployed in teams that specialized in certain types of cases and were deputed to prisons according to their expertise. The team of deputed lawyers would visit Central and District Prisons as often as twice or thrice a week on designated times and would interview those recently admitted to the prison to inquire on their need for legal aid. At present, the Committee provides its services to under-trial prisoners in Sindh prisons and has resolved 15, 670 cases since its inception.
Today, the Committee’s terms of reference have been expanded to cover not just provision of legal representation but also to adopt approaches in lawyering which imbibe a legal empowerment approach through which the power of the law is shifted away from the influentials’ to prisoners themselves. The Committee supports Sindh’s criminal justice system by advocating for speedy trials and case resolutions on behalf of clients. This, in turn, reduces the burden on the overly crowded and under-resourced prison system and district courts.
From 2015 onwards, a more robust approach was taken towards amplifying legal aid provision alongside legal empowerment and welfare initiatives. Prisoners are provided with legal literacy. We have so far trained 78 inmates as paralegals and they, in turn, have trained 1,310 prisoners. New jail admissions/arrivals attend a 2-hour legal awareness session that covers fundamental rights, criminal trial stages, sentencing, and prison rules. Paralegals also connect prison inmates with legal advice and legal aid providers and other state and non-state service providers.
The Committee runs the Early Learning Centers in the Women Prisons in Karachi and Hyderabad to neutralize the prison environment, normalize the living experiences of children incarcerated with their mothers in prisons and help them to reintegrate with society after their release. In Sukkur and Larkana, where the population of children is extremely low, safe spaces have been created in the form of children’s playrooms for children to enjoy a secure play with toys. Women in Karachi Prison and Hyderabad Prison have also been provided sewing cases.
Through the various interventions, a conscious effort is being made to document and record experiences and data so as to make a valuable contribution to the literature in this area. Regular profiling of prisoners is undertaken and assessments on prison conditions are conducted to provide other stakeholders with data for baseline assessments and empirical evidence for more informed policymaking.
This year, the Committee completes 15 years of service delivery across prisons in Sindh. The strengths of this legal aid model stem from the effectiveness of public-private partnerships. The workings of the Committee are given credence and are acknowledged as state-funded and state-supported services. Civil society and government representatives continue to work together for the improvement of conditions in prisons.
It is my sincere hope that this effort continues and, in the next few years, the Prisons of Sindh become model prisons for the rest of the country to learn from.
Justice (r) Nasir Aslam Zahid
Chairperson, 2004 – 2024