Crime and Society Protecting Society through Ensuring Rights of Suspects in Criminal Justice System
Abstract
The successful balance of rights of the suspect against the rights of the victimand the society at large comprises the core of any criminal justice system. In the past,Sri Lanka‟s criminal justice system was organized on the basis of Penal Code, Code ofCriminal Procedure No. 15 of 1979 and the Departmental orders of the Police. PenalCode interpretscrimes and imposes penalties for each particular crime. Basically it is thesubstantial law. And the procedural side was introduced by the Code of CriminalProcedure, and such a code explains the basic mechanism the justice and lawenforcement institutions should comply with and it also provides the proper process.Recently we have seen Prevention of Terrorism Act and Emergency Regulations haveintervened with this procedure. This has resulted in the violation of rights of thesuspects.
Therefore the author seeks to ascertain the nature in which suspects have beenaffected within criminal investigation, Process of Arrest and in period of Detaining bypolice officers. Furthermore it is intended to suggest improvements to the laws relatingto this area in order to minimize these types of violations to protect rights of suspectwithin criminal justice system. And also the author wishes to discuss this issue inrelation to recent case law and with legislative enactments. For better improvement ofour law, a comparative study with Laws in United Kingdom will be done.
Consequently, considering the rights of suspects in criminal procedure we canexamine how their rights get violated in the process of Criminal investigation, Processin Arresting and in detaining periods by police officers.
Key words: Suspects rights, Criminal justice, Investigation, Arrest, Detaining
