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the death penalty and enforced disappearances—experienced aggravation in
one or more respect in 2012. The conditions of detention facilities across the
country remained as abysmal as ever and no attempt of any consequence was
made to make prisons more than mere cages for individuals who end up there.
The problem of overcrowding was as acute as ever; an overwhelming majority
of prisoners was behind bars without a court adjudicating on their case. And
then there were the usual prison practices where entitlement were at the whim
of prison staff and were not allowed without bribe. Detainees’ meetings and
communication with their families remained an ordeal. Conjugal visits remained
a pipe dream. There was no question that many of these problems could
instantly become challenging if only the individuals who genuinely posed a
threat to society were kept in jails. Things were as bad as they were because
alternatives to imprisonment were not considered and because of the inclination
to keep people locked up even before their trials were to start and not releasing
those who remained behind bars because they could not even afford to pay
the most nominal of fines. Little attention was paid to making the prisoners
useful members of society upon their release.
After honouring an informal moratorium on the death penalty for nearly
four years, Pakistan executed a man convicted of murder in November, raising
concerns that a change of government in the 2013 elections might resume
executions in large numbers to reduce the death row population from the
roughly 8,000, one of the largest concentrations of death penalty convicted
anywhere in the world.
The scale of enforced disappearances and the number of cases that HRCP
was able to verify were not too different from 2011. While the Commission
received reports of 87 persons going missing across Pakistan, 72 were either
traced or released. The bodies of at least 72 people who were reported to have
Jails, prisoners and disappearances
Family meetings were an ordeal for the prisoner and the family.