#Data4Justice - Unpacking Judicial Data to Track Implementation of the POCSO Act in Assam, Delhi & Haryana

Uploaded: over 2 years ago; Last updated: over 1 year ago ; Date of Publication: 19-November-2021

Assam, Delhi, Haryana

2012 - April 2020

English

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

The research undertaken for this report covers cases of sexual offences against children which have been registered in the Case Information System (CIS) of the district courts and for which trial has been or is being conducted under the POCSO Act in 2 States of Assam, and Haryana and the National Capital Territory of Delhi. The main source of data for research is cases uploaded on the e-Courts web portal. Cases for eight years starting 2012 to 2020 have been considered, though the cut-off date for the year 2020 varies for each State/UT. This is because data for the 3 States/UT has been downloaded at different points in time. For Assam, the cut-off date is 23 April, 2020, while for Delhi, it is 07 March, 2020 and for Haryana it is 21 March, 2020.

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Research Report

In 2018, HAQ released two reports that looked into the implementation of the POCSO Act in Delhi and Mumbai. While these reports draw attention to important aspects of the law ranging from disclosure of crime by a child to registration of a formal complaint and an FIR, police investigation, timely completion of victim testimony and trial, victim compensation and rehabilitation of children, there is a need for continuous research on similar lines to generate data that can help identify the gaps and challenges that need to be addressed in order to enhance the efficacy of laws. Using technology for research can go a long way in generating real time data analytics and this report is an outcome of one such attempt. There is still a long way to go! Due to data limitations as well as technical challenges, this report is restricted to analysis of implementation of the POCSO Act in Assam, Delhi and Haryana.

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Report Summary

CivicDataLab and HAQ: Centre for Child Rights have joined hands to use technology for creating such a Child Rights Law Implementation tracker in a phased manner. With support coming through the AGAMI Data for Justice Challenge for the first phase, the focus has been on tracking implementation of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences, Act, 2012 (POCSO Act). The main data source has been the e-Courts portal that maintains information of cases registered in the Case Information System (CIS) by all courts. Other data relied upon for comparisons include data retrieved from the Crime in India reports of the NCRB and data presented in response to certain questions raised in the Parliament of India as well as news reports.

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Annexure 1.5 and 1.6 - List of Non Negotiables

Engaging with judicial data implies engaging with the eCommittee of the Supreme Court. The report throws up a set of “non-negotiables”, which, if considered by the eCommittee, can help improve judicial data accountability and children’s access to justice. Finding key dates, outcome of a hearing, orders and judgements online without compromising on the privacy and confidentiality of children will not only aide research and generation of evidence for law and policy reform but can be empowering for children and their families in a big way, without making them dependent on a lawyer to fetch them the documents that they ought to receive as a right.

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Balancing Children's Confidentiality and ...

A Cross-Country Comparison of Best Practices Regarding Children’s Privacy in the Criminal Justice System. We are grateful to (Late) Ms. Debra Ronan, Director, PACE at the Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University, Sydney and the law students of International Participation and Community Engagement Programme of Macquarie University - Emilia Turnbull, Kane Elder, Nicholas Trappett, Maddison Tan , who quickly churned out an international research for us on the issue of privacy and confidentiality of victims and judicial data accountability.

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Datasets (Zipped Archive)

This data archive contains case details for the 19,783 cases registered in the district courts of Assam, Delhi and Haryana that were used to analyse the implementation of the POCSO act in these geographies . All case details were downloaded from the eCourts portal. Please refer to the data handbook to know more about the directory structure and to access the data codebooks (data dictionary) for all the datasets included in this archive.

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Data Handbook

The data handbook contains information about the datasets that are included in the Datasets archive.

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Factsheet - Assam

Key insights for the state of Assam from the report on tracking the implementation of the POCSO Act (2012 - 2020)

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Factsheet - Delhi

Key insights for Delhi from the report on tracking the implementation of the POCSO Act (2012 - 2020)

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Factsheet - Haryana

Key insights for the state of Haryana from the report on tracking the implementation of the POCSO Act (2012 - 2020)

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Factbook prepared by HAQ

The Factbook carries powerful insights drawn from profiles of 417 children, whom HAQ represents in Courts, between the years 2012 and 2021. The Factbook is broken into 10 factsheets that look at the profiles of children who experienced abuse, the proximity of those accused, and the legal aspects of proceeding, acquittal, conviction and bail. Each factsheet includes relevant data-points to provide insights and analysis of the findings. The document includes a callout in the bail section and stories in the final section that will provide the readers facts on what children experience, the significance of delivering legal rights to them, and how collaboration and partnership can make a difference. This Factbook is the latest edition of the factsheets that HAQ documents with a wide audience in mind that include those who work with children, rights activists, lawyers, students, researchers, the media, the world’s citizens to whom the innocence of childhood is of utmost importance and who have made it their mission to invest in the well being of children today for a safer tomorrow.