When a 25-Year Sentence Does Not Mean 25 Years: Rethinking Pakistan’s Criminal Justice System

When a 25-Year Sentence Does Not
Mean 25 Years: Rethinking Pakistan’s Criminal Justice System

Article by: Muhammad Riaz

The tears of a Chief Minister at the home of a bereaved father are not merely an expression of personal grief; they reflect the collective pain of a society. When five-year-old Ayat Noor was sexually assaulted and killed in Haripur, the tragedy shook the conscience of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. On August 29, 2026, Chief Minister Sohail Afridi visited the bereaved family, expressed solidarity with her father and pledged tougher child-protection measures and exemplary punishment for those responsible. He also directed the administration to strengthen its writ and announced measures including financial assistance for the family and a Safe City project for Haripur.

The Chief Minister’s emotion was understandable. But for a Chief Executive, the responsibility extends beyond a moment of grief. The more enduring response is to convert grief into institutional action, emotion into policy and public outrage into a Criminal Justice System capable of preventing crime, investigating professionally, prosecuting effectively, deciding cases without unnecessary delay, administering imprisonment fairly and preparing offenders for lawful reintegration.

This takes the debate beyond an individual case. The larger question is whether Pakistan’s Criminal Justice System is designed so that punishment remains meaningful, proportionate and credible from the reporting of an offence until the offender completes the sentence imposed by a competent court.

The Criminal Justice System is not a single institution. It is a chain comprising principally law-enforcement agencies, prosecution, the judiciary, prisons and corrections, and probation and parole. Victims, witnesses, rehabilitation and reintegration run across this chain. A weakness at any point affects the whole system. Effective police investigation cannot compensate for ineffective prosecution; strong prosecution cannot compensate for prolonged judicial proceedings; and a sound judicial sentence can lose some of its public meaning if its subsequent administration lacks transparency and consistency.

Pakistan has laws, courts, prisons and established procedures. The greater challenge lies in coordination, capacity, implementation and accountability. Criminal justice reform therefore cannot simply mean building more prisons, appointing more police officers or establishing more courts. It requires a coordinated architecture in which every institution understands its role in delivering justice.

For someone working within the prison system, one issue deserves particular attention: remission.

Remission is not inherently undesirable. Prison systems recognise incentives for good conduct, discipline, work, education and rehabilitation. Properly designed remission can encourage prisoners to behave responsibly and participate in constructive programmes. International standards also recognise post-sentencing alternatives while emphasising clear criteria and safeguards.

The real question is whether Pakistan’s remission system is sufficiently rational, transparent, proportionate and connected with the objectives of sentencing.

Consider a hypothetical prisoner sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment for a serious offence. Twenty-five years represents a substantial deprivation of liberty and communicates the seriousness of the offence as determined by a court. Yet the actual period spent in custody may be affected by different forms of remission available under the applicable prison rules.

Ordinary remission may be earned through good conduct and industry, while special remission may be available for specified meritorious conduct and other qualifying activities. There are also provisions relating to education and examinations. Consequently, the nominal sentence imposed by the court and the actual custodial period may not always be identical.

This is where the system deserves serious policy review.

The issue is not whether a well-behaved prisoner should receive incentives. Discipline, education, vocational training and rehabilitation should certainly be encouraged. The Nelson Mandela Rules emphasise that imprisonment should protect society, reduce recidivism and prepare prisoners for reintegration.

But a modern Criminal Justice System must also answer an important question: does the remission framework preserve a meaningful relationship between the sentence pronounced by the court and the period ultimately served?

It would be legally inaccurate to suggest that every 25-year sentence automatically becomes eight years and four months, or that every prisoner will necessarily be released after nine years. The actual release date depends upon the applicable rules, remission earned, forfeitures, sentence commencement, under-trial detention credit, exclusions and other relevant provisions.

Nevertheless, the complexity itself creates a policy challenge. If an ordinary citizen cannot understand why a person sentenced to a lengthy term may leave prison substantially earlier than the headline sentence suggests, public confidence can suffer. If prison officials administer a complicated remission framework without a modern and transparent release-calculation mechanism, uncertainty can arise. If victims and their families are not adequately informed about the legal consequences of remission, they may perceive the system as diminishing the punishment imposed by the court.

The answer is not necessarily to abolish remission. It is to modernise it and align it more closely with sentencing objectives.

Good behaviour, education, vocational training, rehabilitation and demonstrated readiness for reintegration should have a rational relationship with release decisions. At the same time, the seriousness of the offence, the harm caused, public safety and the prisoner’s conduct throughout imprisonment should be considered within a clearly defined legal framework.

The prison officer should not be placed in the position of appearing either unnecessarily harsh or excessively generous. The officer should administer a clear law.

Prisons are sometimes blamed for weaknesses that originate elsewhere. A prison receives a prisoner after investigation, prosecution and judicial proceedings have already taken place. It does not determine guilt, conduct the initial investigation, frame the charge or impose the sentence. Its responsibility is to administer the sentence according to law while maintaining custody, security, discipline, welfare and rehabilitation.

Blaming prisons alone for weaknesses in the Criminal Justice System is therefore neither fair nor analytically correct.

At the same time, prison reform cannot be separated from criminal justice reform. Overcrowding, inadequate infrastructure, staff shortages, security threats, insufficient rehabilitation facilities, classification problems and harmful inmate associations all affect the ultimate objective of imprisonment.

A prison that merely stores offenders until release is not a modern correctional institution. Equally, humane treatment must not be confused with unjustified privilege.

Prisoners are human beings and must be treated with dignity. But humane treatment does not mean absence of discipline, and rehabilitation does not mean erosion of lawful punishment. The Nelson Mandela Rules place rehabilitation, social reintegration and the protection of society at the centre of imprisonment.

Another important issue is the formation of criminal associations inside prisons. If classification, supervision and rehabilitation are inadequate, experienced offenders can influence less experienced prisoners. Organised criminal groups may also attempt to maintain unlawful links from inside custody.

The solution is not indiscriminate isolation. It is intelligent classification, intelligence-led prison management, trained staff, effective supervision, controlled communications, meaningful occupation, education, vocational programmes and structured preparation for release.

Security and rehabilitation are not opposing concepts. A professionally managed prison requires both.

Pakistan also needs to strengthen probation and parole. A modern Criminal Justice System cannot treat imprisonment as the beginning and end of punishment.

The transition from prison to society is one of the most important stages of crime prevention. Successful reintegration may require employment, housing, documentation, family support, supervision and access to social services.

The objective should therefore be a complete sentence-management system beginning when the court imposes a sentence and continuing through custody, release and, where appropriate, post-release supervision.

Such a system should be digital, auditable and transparent. Every remission should have a recorded legal basis, date, authority, reason and cumulative effect. Prisoners should be able to understand how their projected release date has been calculated. Subject to appropriate safeguards, victims should have a mechanism for receiving relevant information about significant stages of release. Most importantly, release calculations should be capable of independent review so that an administrative error does not become a public controversy after release.

This would strengthen—not weaken—the prison administration.

The tragedy of Ayat Noor should provoke a broader conversation than the punishment of the accused in one case. It should compel an examination of the entire chain of justice: how crimes are reported, how evidence is collected, how investigations are supervised, how prosecutors build cases, how courts manage trials, how sentences are administered, how remission is calculated, how parole decisions are made and how released prisoners are supervised.

The Chief Minister occupies an important position in this architecture. He does not personally operate every component of the Criminal Justice System, nor should he. Police, prosecution, judiciary, prisons and probation have distinct legal and institutional functions. But the provincial executive can promote coordination, legislation, budgetary reform, digitalisation and institutional review within its lawful authority.

That is why the tears of a Chief Executive should ultimately become something larger than a moment captured by a camera. They should become institutional review; institutional review should become policy; policy should become legislation and administrative practice; and those reforms should ultimately be measured by whether fewer families have to stand before the graves of innocent children.

For the prison department, the message should be equally clear. Prisons must remain humane, lawful, secure and correctional. Prison officers must administer the rules fairly and professionally. But the rules themselves should not be immune from review.

The remission system, in particular, deserves comprehensive examination by legal experts, prison administrators, criminologists, judges, prosecutors, probation authorities and representatives of victims’ interests.

The central question is simple: when a court imposes a sentence, does the subsequent system preserve the credibility of that sentence while simultaneously encouraging rehabilitation?

If that relationship is unclear, reform is necessary.

Pakistan does not need a Criminal Justice System that is merely punitive, nor one that is merely lenient. It needs a system that is predictable, proportionate, transparent, rehabilitative and protective of society.The tragedy of Ayat Noor should therefore become an opportunity to examine the entire architecture of criminal justice—not merely the punishment of one accused person.Justice does not end when a court pronounces a sentence. It continues through investigation, prosecution, adjudication, imprisonment, remission, parole, rehabilitation and reintegration.The question Pakistan should now ask is not simply how severely a criminal can be punished, but whether every component of the Criminal Justice System is working together to ensure that punishment is lawful, meaningful, proportionate and capable of protecting society.