ASTANA – Kazakhstan’s criminal justice system will be fully digitised by 2018, said Kazakh Prosecutor General Zhakip Asanov at a Nov. 15 Parliament’s plenary session. The meeting was dedicated to the first reading of the draft law on the modernisation of the procedural justice for law enforcement.
During parliament’s plenary session. Photo credit: parlam.kz
“We plan to start the digitisation process in the criminal justice next year. The process includes the receipt of application and covers all the investigation, trial and execution of punishment. Each case starting from the beginning of the criminal and pre-trial investigations to serving sentence will be digitised,” said Asanov.
The planned digitisation of criminal trials will allow Kazakhstan to share that experience with other countries.
“Foreign experts said that digitalisation was carried out only in pre-trial investigation in Saudi Arabia, Lithuania, and Georgia. But the digitisation of the entire system to solve the problem in any case hasn’t been introduced yet. Our progressive experience allows us to share this knowledge with other foreign experts,” he said.
Currently, more than 400 cases have been transferred from paper to electronic format in six regions of the country as a pilot project. About 200 electronic sanctions have been received. IT-system developed by the Prosecutor General’s Office required no additional funds from the budget. The full transition of criminal cases to digital format is to be completed by the end of 2018.
“The most important thing is that the digitisation will strengthen the protection of human rights. This will provide transparency of investigation. Prosecutor’s control will increase and corruption will decrease. IT system will greatly facilitate the work of both the investigator, the prosecutor, and the judges,” he said.
The official also spoke about measures taken during the years of independence to improve the criminal situation, including toughening penalties, humanising punishments, reducing the prison population and increasing enforcement of particular crime categories.
