Reports and Publications

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Narcotics Offense Fact-Sheet

A snapshot of Pakistan’s rising incarceration rates for drug-related offences, highlighting troubling trends in undertrial populations, gender disparities on death row, and inconsistencies in prisoner categorization.

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Pakistan’s Drug Policy Journey

A timeline of Pakistan’s evolving drug policy, from punitive laws to early signs of reform, with key milestones involving the judiciary, legislative amendments, and international collaboration.

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Reimagining Justice: Upholding Human Rights Under the CNSA – Judicial Training Course Launch & Expert Workshop

Reimagining Justice: Upholding Human Rights Under the CNSA – Judicial Training Course Launch & Expert Workshop

Annual Prison Data Report

Annual Prison Data Report provides a detailed overview of incarceration trends across Pakistan, drawing on official data from prison departments nationwide. The report highlights key figures on overcrowding, pre-trial detention, health, and the treatment of vulnerable groups. By identifying systemic gaps and patterns, it offers critical insights for policymakers, researchers, and reform advocates working to improve prison conditions and justice outcomes.

Death Penalty in Pakistan: Data Mapping Capital Punishment – 2024

This report presents a comprehensive analysis of capital punishment in Pakistan, based on data from 132 prisons across all provinces and territories. It highlights key trends and legal patterns while introducing a new section on Pakistan’s obligations under the ICCPR. Released on the World Day Against the Death Penalty, the report is a vital resource for those working toward criminal justice reform.

Narcotics Offenses Dataset:1st Statistics Report on Narcotics Offenses in Pakistan

This publication provides an in-depth analysis of narcotics offences in Pakistan, covering arrest trends, prison demographics, legal changes, and systemic challenges. It emphasizes the need for drug policies that prioritize health rights, voluntary treatment, and harm reduction. Globally, drug use disorders have risen sharply, but punitive approaches—such as compulsory treatment, overcrowded prisons, and the death penalty—continue to pose major human rights concerns, especially for vulnerable groups.

Gap Analysis: Torture and Custodial Death (Prevention and Punishment) Act, 2022

A critical review of Pakistan’s Torture and Custodial Death Act, 2022, identifying its gaps in compliance with international standards like the UNCAT, and recommending key legislative and operational reforms to better protect human rights.

Primer for lawyers representing foreign prisoners in Malaysia

This report presents a comprehensive analysis of capital punishment in Pakistan, based on data from 132 prisons across all provinces and territories. It highlights key trends and legal patterns while introducing a new section on Pakistan’s obligations under the ICCPR. Released on the World Day Against the Death Penalty, the report is a vital resource for those working toward criminal justice reform.

Reimagining Justice: Public Health and Human Rights-Centered Drug Policy — Post-Event Report

A landmark three-day conference organized by Justice Project Pakistan that brought together policymakers, judges, civil society leaders, and international experts to advance a human rights–centered approach to drug policy, culminating in actionable recommendations for reform.

Protecting the Rights of Foreign Nationals Imprisoned in Pakistan

A policy-oriented report outlining the legal challenges faced by foreign nationals in Pakistan’s prisons, and proposing consular engagement, legal aid, and procedural reforms to ensure fair treatment under international and domestic law.

Primer for lawyers representing foreign prisoners in Malaysia

This report presents a comprehensive analysis of capital punishment in Pakistan, based on data from 132 prisons across all provinces and territories. It highlights key trends and legal patterns while introducing a new section on Pakistan’s obligations under the ICCPR. Released on the World Day Against the Death Penalty, the report is a vital resource for those working toward criminal justice reform.

Reimagining Justice: Public Health and Human Rights-Centered Drug Policy — Post-Event Report

A landmark three-day conference organized by Justice Project Pakistan that brought together policymakers, judges, civil society leaders, and international experts to advance a human rights–centered approach to drug policy, culminating in actionable recommendations for reform.

Death Row’s Children: Pakistan’s Unlawful Executions of Juvenile Offenders

An in-depth investigation into Pakistan’s continued execution of juvenile offenders in violation of domestic and international law, this report documents systemic failures in age verification, trial procedures, and legal protections for minors.

Pakistan’s Review Under the UN Treaty Body System – Blue Book (2019)

A comprehensive compilation of Pakistan’s engagements with UN treaty bodies, highlighting systemic human rights concerns, treaty violations, and specific recommendations issued under the Convention Against Torture, CERD, CESCR, CRC, and ICCPR.

International Human Rights Law Conference — Post-Event Report (2022)

A two-day conference organized by Justice Project Pakistan to promote the application of international human rights law within Pakistan’s judicial system, bringing together judges, diplomats, and civil society leaders to discuss key thematic areas and actionable reforms.

Stories from Bagram: Returnees and Their Families

A deeply human and politically grounded collection of testimonies from former Pakistani detainees held at the U.S. military prison in Bagram, Afghanistan. The report explores how systemic abandonment by the Pakistani state, compounded by trauma and years of unlawful detention, reshaped lives and families.

The Death Penalty in Law and in Practice: Pakistan (2023)

An overview of the death penalty’s extensive use in Pakistan, highlighting systemic fair trial violations, poor prison conditions for death row inmates, and international pressure to reintroduce a moratorium and move toward abolition.

Through the Cracks: The Exploitation of Pakistani Migrant Workers in the Gulf Recruitment Regime

An investigative report by Justice Project Pakistan documenting how Pakistan’s weak migration governance exposes low-wage migrant workers to trafficking, exploitation, forced drug smuggling, and wrongful imprisonment, particularly in Gulf countries.

A “Most Serious Crime”: Pakistan’s Unlawful Use of the Death Penalty

An extensive legal and human rights analysis of how Pakistan’s death penalty regime violates international law, relying on torture-based confessions, flawed anti-terrorism legislation, ineffective legal aid, and the sentencing of juveniles and mentally ill individuals.

Abuse of Juveniles under Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Laws

An investigative report exposing how Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) is routinely misapplied to prosecute juveniles as terrorists, leading to wrongful convictions, torture, death sentences, and severe due process violations.

Death Penalty in Pakistan

A comprehensive overview of the use of the death penalty in Pakistan, including its legal framework, recent trends, international obligations, and the human rights concerns surrounding wrongful convictions, undertrial delays, and disproportionate sentencing.

Trial and Terror: The Overreach of Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Framework

A critical investigation of Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), showing how its vague definitions and expansive powers lead to human rights abuses, wrongful executions, and the systemic misuse of terrorism courts to try ordinary criminal cases.

Trapped Inside: Mental Illness and Incarceration

A landmark report by Justice Project Pakistan highlighting how people with mental illnesses are systematically failed at every stage of the criminal justice process—from arrest to execution—despite legal protections, with a focus on necessary reforms after the landmark Safia Bano Supreme Court judgment.

Death PenNo Mercy: A Report on Clemency for Death Row Prisoners in Pakistanalty in Pakistan

A critical examination of Pakistan’s broken clemency system, this report exposes how the constitutional right to mercy has become functionally inaccessible for death row prisoners due to legal ambiguity, political risk, and administrative inertia.

Reimagining Justice: Public Health and Human Rights Centered Drug Policy

The Reimagining Justice consultation on 28 January 2025 built on Justice Project Pakistan’s 2024 conference, which launched the country’s first national dialogue on drug policy and human rights. Since then, progress includes the Prosecutor General Punjab’s visit to Portugal to study its drug policy and the Federal Judicial Academy’s development of a human rights–focused course for judges.

THE CONTROL OF NARCOTICS SUBSTANCES ACT 1997: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS

A detailed critique of Pakistan’s narcotics law, the CNSA, examining how its vague provisions, punitive sentencing, and misuse by law enforcement contribute to human rights violations and mass incarceration.

Policing Practices under the CNSA

An in-depth assessment of Pakistan’s current anti-narcotics policing strategies under the CNSA, highlighting challenges like porous borders, the rise of synthetic drugs, and limited rehabilitation, with key recommendations for inter-agency cooperation, community policing, and enhanced forensic capacity.

Public Health and Harm Reduction

This brief advocates for transitioning from punitive drug policies to a public health-centered harm reduction approach in Pakistan, emphasizing the need for decriminalization, treatment access, and human rights protections.

Proportionate Sentencing under the CNSA

Analyzes the impact of mandatory minimums and rigid sentencing under the CNSA, showing how they fuel prison overcrowding and disproportionately affect low-level offenders, and calls for reforms like judicial discretion and rehabilitation pathways.

Training for Malaysian Lawyers on Representing Foreign Nationals Imprisoned in Malaysia

This report covers a one-day training organized by JPP and MCCHR in collaboration with the Kuala Lumpur Legal Aid Centre, aimed at strengthening the legal representation of foreign nationals imprisoned in Malaysia through enhanced understanding of consular protections, legal rights, pre-trial and post-conviction practices, and immigration detention challenges.

Data Dashboard 2023: Prison Population of Pakistan

A nationwide snapshot of Pakistan’s prison system, this data-driven report presents alarming trends in overcrowding, under-trial detention, and prison demographics, underscoring the urgent need for systemic reform

Prison Population of Pakistan – Fact Sheet 2022

A concise but powerful overview of Pakistan’s prison system in 2022, this fact sheet highlights extreme overcrowding, high under-trial rates, lack of prison infrastructure, and the systemic neglect of women, juveniles, and religious minorities.

Prisoners of the Pandemic: The Right to Health and COVID-19 in Pakistan’s Detention Facilities

This urgent joint investigation by Amnesty International and Justice Project Pakistan reveals how Pakistan’s prisons, already strained by overcrowding and neglect, became hotspots of human rights violations during the COVID-19 pandemic. It calls for sweeping reforms in detention practices, healthcare access, and prisoner release policies.

Abuse of Women in Pakistan’s Criminal Justice System

A critical report detailing how women in Pakistan face systemic abuse and discrimination at every stage of the criminal justice process—from arrest and investigation to trial, sentencing, and imprisonment.A critical report detailing how women in Pakistan face systemic abuse and discrimination at every stage of the criminal justice process—from arrest and investigation to trial, sentencing, and imprisonment.

Policing as Torture: A Study of Pakistan’s Criminal Justice System and the Normalization of Violence

An investigative report revealing how torture is not only widespread but functionally embedded in everyday policing in Pakistan, this study documents systemic abuse, legal loopholes, and the lack of accountability that enables violent law enforcement practices.

Counting Executions (Justice Project Pakistan – Death Penalty Fact Sheet, July 2017)

This fact sheet reveals how Pakistan’s executions surged after lifting the moratorium in 2014, with Punjab responsible for the vast majority. It highlights misuse of anti-terror laws, political patterns in executions, and a troubling link between prison overcrowding and execution rates.

Policing as Torture: A Report on Systemic Brutality in Pakistan

This report exposes how torture is routinely used by police in Pakistan as a tool of investigation and punishment, often targeting poor and marginalized communities. Drawing from case studies, legal analysis, and testimonies, it highlights a culture of impunity, lack of accountability mechanisms, and the failure of safeguards against custodial abuse.

Migrant Workers: Data Set and Analysis (2020)

This data set examines the criminalization of Pakistani migrant workers in Gulf countries, analyzing cases of arrest, detention, and execution. It highlights patterns of legal neglect, lack of consular support, and systemic vulnerabilities that leave migrant workers disproportionately exposed to harsh penalties abroad.

COVID-19 and Incarceration: Risk, Overcrowding & Public Health

This infographic-based report highlights how overcrowded prisons in Pakistan posed extreme risks during the COVID-19 pandemic. It outlines infection vulnerabilities, inadequate healthcare infrastructure, and the urgent need for decongestion to protect prisoners, staff, and broader public health.