ICJS – Interoperable Criminal Justice System

The need for speedy justice in India has always been felt by legal experts and those who were on the receiving end of legal proceedings. The Interoperable Criminal Justice System (ICJS) has been introduced to facilitate speedy justice through data-exchange between the courts, police/prosecution, jails and the forensic labs. It has been developed by NIF for the District Courts, prisons and police stations, namely Case Information System, e-Prisons and Kanoon Vyavastha, respectively.

Objectives

ICS primarily seeks to offer an online Integrated Management Information System by inter-linking data from courts, police, prisons and forensic laboratories for improving the justice delivery system. Under this, all stakeholders would have online and instant access to data available in different software applications, thereby reducing the time normally consumed in manual exchange of documents or information amongst related departments. On the whole, it is envisioned to ensure speedy delivery of justice to the common man by interlinking the related justice delivery systems and augment the quality of investigation. Some of its other objectives include the removal of exchanging paper-based information amongst the stakeholders and utilization of digitized data of other domains directly in individual applications.

Features

• This is the first-of-its-kind initiative in the country.
• It provides immediate, online and near real-time data availability across domains through inter-linking.
• Relatives of prisoners are offered with the option of interacting with prisoners through software-based VC.
• As standard software level applications are being used, the initiative could be replicated at the national level.
• Uniform rules and acts have been prescribed for courts, prisons, police and forensics across the country.
• Alerts are issued in the event of any crimes, ready/pending forensic reports, arrests made, a case that is coming up for court hearing, passing of orders/judgements by the court.
• Data mining as per domain specific parameters.
• Innovative applications like mobile-based channelling system.
• Investigative tools for queries concerning electronic domain databases.

Status of Implementation

For the purpose of this initiative:

• 114 police stations have been linked with the Common Integrated Police Application.
• 3 Forensic Laboratories have been established.
• VC facility has been created in all prisons for enabling prisoners to interact with relatives, investigating officials and courts.