What is the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022?

Source: The post is based on the article “What is the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022?” published in The Hindu on 12^th August 2022.

Syllabus: GS 2 – Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

Relevance: About the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022.

News: The Ministry of Home Affairs recently notified that the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022 will come into effect from August. It also repeals the existing Identification of Prisoners Act, 1920.

What are the salient provisions of the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022?

What is the use of identification details in criminal trials?

Measurements and photographs for identification have three main purposes. 1) To establish the identity of the culprit against the person being arrested, 2) To identify suspected repetition of similar offences by the same person and 3) To establish a previous conviction.

What was the need to replace the Identification of Prisoners Act, 1920?

In State of UP vs Ram Babu Misra case: The Supreme Court highlighted the need for amending the Identification of Prisoners Act.

87th Report of the Law Commission of India in 1980: The Commission undertook a review of the Identification of Prisoners Act based on the Supreme Court ruling and the numerous amendments made to the Act by several States.

The commission recommended several amendments.

These include a) Expanding the scope such as “palm impressions”, “specimen of signature or writing” and “specimen of voice”, b)  Allowing measurements to be taken for proceedings other than those under the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC).

What is the difference between the Identification of Prisoners Act, 1920 and the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022?

What are the concerns associated with the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022?

The other concerns are,

1) The inclusion of derivative data such as “analysis” and “behavioural attributes” have raised concerns that data processing may go beyond recording of core “measurements”.

2) Unlike the Identification of Prisoners Act, 1920 the present Act allows for “measurements” to be taken if a person has been convicted/arrested for any offence, including petty offences. This has the following issues,

a) The necessity of taking measurements of such persons for investigation of offences is unclear, b) Likely to result in abuse of the law at lower levels, c)  overburdening of the systems used for collection and storage of “measurements”.

3) Large collection of data can also result in mass surveillance, with the database being combined with other databases such as those of the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS).

What should be done?

Though the Act will aid police in predictive policing. Purposes for collecting “analysis” and “behavioural attributes” need to be better defined.

The Central government said that the privacy and data protection-related concerns will be addressed in the Rules formulated under the legislation and through model Prison Manuals that States can refer to. This has to be done at the earliest.