Uganda: Paralegal Advisory Services
Introduction
Paralegal Advisory Services (PAS) is a national project managed by the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative. It operated from October 2005 to 31st December 2006 as a pilot. An evaluation of the pilot project showed that investing in PAS was value for money; it had carved out a strategic niche in the criminal justice system by focusing on linking the demand side of the criminal justice system at the level of the indigent; contributed significantly to the decongestion problem in Uganda police and prisons by approximately 2,500 in the pilot areas. Overall, the prison remand population was reduced from 63% to 58% as a result of PAS interventions. The programme was found to have given “a human face” to the criminal justice procedures and has received a three year grant to run activities from 2007 to 2009
PAS Interventions
PAS is an innovative programme that aims at enhancing access to justice through the use of non- lawyers, i.e. paralegals and social workers, to provide legal aid services to poor persons in conflict with the law. Paralegals and social workers help to expedite access to justice for the poor through the criminal justice system by working in places of detention including police, prisons and remand homes as well as courts. They provide basic legal advice; follow up cases in the criminal justice institutions and link the suspects and remand prisoners to their families and community members for the required assistance.
A small component of the programme is to facilitate the process for diverting persons detained in police cells who are accused of petty offenses through alternative dispute resolution.
PAS Strategic Niche in Accessing Justice for the poor in conflict with the law
The PAS project has been designed to respond to the existing gaps and challenges within the criminal justice institutions as a means of facilitating access to justice.
Criminal Justice System Gap Analysis
In the past ten years, the criminal justice (CJ) reforms in Uganda have focused on strengthening the supply side, the institutions charged with the administration of justice. This has taken two forms. The first has been through institutional development, while the second has focused on policy re-engineering within the broad framework of national development objectives. Emphasis has been on meeting the needs of the criminal justice system for manpower, equipment, facilities, and programmes. The problem with this reform thrust, however, is that it ignores the users of the CJ agencies. This is largely because of a limiting administrative and practice ethos, the absence of an institutionalized voice from the demand side—representatives of accused persons—poor policy administration, and interpretation. As a result, the range, quality and volume of justice available to the poor is low. This is manifested in increasing delays, case backlogs, and unwarranted congestion in detention places and prisons.
Given the aforementioned, PAS strategically responds by creating voice and space for the CJ system users to access quality justice. The desired result is to make them “active players and partners” in the administration of criminal justice. More specifically the project fills the above gap by participating in the process of decongestion, engaging in practice advocacy, and raising the visibility of the demand side of the CJ system.
Another strategic response of PAS is to reduce ‘voice poverty’ for those in conflict with the law. This is achieved by empowering the CJ users, improving the ‘quality of demand’ to the CJ system, and linking the demand and supply sides of the system.