National Criminal Justice Reform
Criminal Justice and Public Security
Alternatives to Pretrial Detention
Legal Aid Reform
Fair and effective justice systems based on the rule of law are a prerequisite for open societies. Conversely, poorly functioning systems disserve crime victims, suspects, convicted offenders, and members of the general public. An essential function of a criminal justice system in an open society is to safeguard individuals from crime, protect the rights of victims, and assure due process and fair trials for those charged with offenses. In many countries, widespread fear of crime engenders support for repressive measures by state and nonstate actors.
The Justice Initiative's work on national criminal justice reform promotes the state’s ability to secure order and administer justice, so as to protect individual rights and enable citizens’ full participation in public life. To this end, the Justice Initiative promotes human rights within the criminal justice sphere by pursuing three main aims:
- developing alternatives to and reducing the state’s use of pretrial detention—the practice of holding suspects in jail rather than releasing them on bail or other form of security;
- ensuring accountability for conduct and performance by the police and prosecution, while improving their ability to provide security to the public; and
- broadening access to competent legal representation for indigent criminal defendants.
Pretrial Detention
Excessive pretrial detention not only undermines the rights to liberty and speedy process, but can cause other abuses resulting from overcrowded, unsanitary, and dangerous jails and detention centers. In this way, it can actually contribute to criminality, especially for juvenile defendants. Pretrial detention often results in social and economic hardship for detainees and their families. In numerous countries where the Justice Initiative is active, arrest is often arbitrary and vulnerable groups are detained disproportionately.
Consistent with international standards, the Justice Initiative aims to rationalize the use of pretrial detention, and to encourage its use only where there is a genuine risk of flight, obstruction of justice, or additional serious criminal activity. The Justice Initiative also seeks to promote credible alternatives to pretrial detention, and to improve the capacity of civil society, as well as national and regional mechanisms, to monitor conditions of detention.
In Mexico, the Justice Initiative is working with a local NGO partner, Renace, and the state government of Chihuahua to develop a pilot bail evaluation and supervision center in Chihuahua City that has the potential to change radically the way pretrial detention decisions are made and administered. These reforms are intended to provide all defendants with the right to be considered for pretrial release. The project has commissioned Mexico’s first cost-benefit analysis of pretrial detention practices and alternative models to pretrial detention, to illustrate the price of the current system and bolster the case for change.
More broadly, the Justice Initiative is studying efforts to reform pretrial detention in 10 countries to understand the political impetus for, and limits to, change; document successes and failures in different contexts; and extract empirical knowledge of more general application. The Justice Initiative aims to inform further pretrial detention reform efforts by disseminating these case studies to donors, governments, inter-governmental bodies, and NGOs.
Current Justice Initiative work on pretrial detention builds on previous successful initiatives, including projects to improve the juvenile justice system in Kazakhstan and reform pretrial detention in Latvia and Ukraine.
Law Enforcement Accountability and Effectiveness
The Justice Initiative’s work in the field of law enforcement accountability and effectiveness enhances state capacity to promote public security, and create a more open and responsive criminal justice system. To this end, the Justice Initiative has created Indicators of Democratic Policing, a sophisticated yet practical tool for measuring police accountability and responsiveness.
The Justice Initiative is also addressing the use of ethnic profiling by law enforcement authorities in Europe in both ordinary criminal justice and counter-terrorism. A multi-faceted project in several European Union member states is raising public awareness through research and documentation, pressing for the adoption of standards that limit or ban ethnic profiling, and fostering the development of collaborative approaches to policing that involve minority communities as partners.
In Georgia, the Justice Initiative is assisting the prosecutor-general in developing a community prosecution model that will improve how the prosecution service understands and responds to the public safety needs of the community. Community prosecution, which originated in the United States, is a growing movement in countries as diverse as Chile, South Africa, and the Netherlands. The project in Georgia aims to enhance the prosecution service’s accountability to the general public, empower prosecutors to more effectively deal with specific endemic crime problems, and improve public trust in the prosecution service and the criminal justice system as a whole.
Legal Aid for Indigent Criminal Defendants
Throughout the world, the vast majority of people charged with crimes cannot afford private counsel. Although international standards require provision of free and effective legal assistance to all indigent criminal defendants accused of serious crime, in practice many governments fail to live up to this responsibility.
The Justice Initiative helps governments improve the management, administration, financing and monitoring of legal services delivery. Projects develop and implement models of effective legal aid provision, carry out research to measure the quantity and quality of legal representation, and promote local development of minimum lawyering skills and standards of defense. The development of paralegal services to complement the activities of the organized bar is another component of the Justice Initiative’s overall approach to legal aid reform. The Justice Initiative also led efforts to conceptualize and initiate a project on access to justice in Sierra Leone, currently run by the NGO Timap for Justice, which trains and deploys paralegals to provide legal services in rural areas of the country.
In recent years, the Justice Initiative has supported several legal aid reform efforts in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. For example, a pilot public defender office (PDO) in Kharkiv, Ukraine, has five lawyers and a paralegal working full-time on behalf of indigent criminal defendants, and two more pilot offices will soon open in other parts of the country. In Lithuania, the success of the Justice Initiative’s model PDO led to a new law on nationwide legal aid guaranteed and financed by the state. Efforts in Bulgaria resulted in a new law that restructures how the government delivers, funds, and organizes legal aid. In other countries, including Georgia, Mongolia, Moldova, Nigeria, and Kyrgyzstan, the Justice Initiative is working with governments to lay the groundwork for legal aid reform.
Contact
National Criminal Justice Reform: Martin Schönteich
Tel: +1 212-548-0391
Fax: +1 212-548-4662
Legal Aid Reform: Zaza Namoradze
Tel: + 36 1 327-3109
Fax: + 36 1 327-3101