Toyota Lean Methodology – The Waste is Petty Cases

I have got a few questions. Well, I don’t know the answers of any of them.

• How many cases are there before all the courts combined in India?
• In how many cases, the case is a petty crime, viz. chain snatching, picking a pocket etc?
• In how many cases an undertrial has served the maximum possible sentence for his crime?
• What is the prescribed average number of cases per day per judge in India? What is the actual? Does the data exist at the court level?

The point of raising these questions is not to make someone uncomfortable. The point is to identify what is eating up the time of the courts and is there any way we can cut down the waste – focus on real work. The real need of the day is either to increase the judges along with time since, as time progresses, population increases and along with population, crime or to ensure faster disposal. I will, as a personal choice, prefer a combination of the both and will try not to waste my time over petty crimes where the judgement is predetermined. Let’s look at one scenario as to how can we achieve it.

• Classify all the crimes into India into a specific number of categories.
• Make a list of all the cases in every court in the country and consolidate the data in a single location. The bare minimum data needed is this –
• Name & Mandatory Details – Crime – Classification – Jail where the convict is lodged – Term in Jail – Maximum Permissible Punishment – Repeated Offender? – Repeated Offender in Petty Crimes Only – Serious Crime?
• Run a simple logic on the complete database on these lines.

a.     If Term in Jail > Maximum Permissible Punishment, set the flag as Y

b.     If Term in Jail > 90%*Maximum Permissible Punishment and Repeated Offender in Petty Crimes only is Y, set the flag as Y

c.     If Term in Jail > 70%*Maximum Permissible Punishment and Repeated Offender in Petty Crimes only is N, set the flag as Y

• Pass an ordnance signed by, say the Chief Justice of Supreme Court of India or a High Court Chief Justice for all the cases under his jurisdiction to release all those undertrials for whom the flag is set to Y with the judgement as Pronounced not guilty without any chance for redressal and release them. To make everyone’s life easier, the document can be signed digitally by the Judge in question and countersigned by the officer handling the release. Download a copy of the file, countersign it, keep a copy with the police station, give a copy to the released and scan it then and there, to replace the existing file by the countersigned one.

Just think of the amount of benefit it brings – lesser number of cases, the money spent on keeping the undertrials in prison(lodging costs and transportation to the court), creation of a central database of all crime in India, which can be used by the government for relevant purposes. And what are we doing to achieve it? Install a computer in every court and police station, enter all the cases into a simple form which will update a single database and may be, pass an ordnance or a law through parliament for a one time activity.

Once this list is cleared off, focus on those who have served 40% of their sentence and close off the cases.

This is not the end of the story. Let’s take a particular scenario. A person is caught picking a pocket. The case is clear cut and the person has agreed to his crime. He is not a repeated offender. The maximum sentence for him is, let’s say, 3 months. Is it worth wasting the time of the courts and of the police to formally confirm a sentence which is already known to everyone? Is it worth the money to transfer the undertrial to a court and back, thereby wasting fuel, time and effort? Instead of doing all these, can’t we create a form with restricted access where you enter the details and it gives the sentence? Enter the name, enter the crime, enter whether he is a repeated offender, enter how much time he spent in jail as undertrial for the current crime, and as a convict for the previous offences and let it give out a number. Take a print of it; the investigative officer, the undertrial and a judge assigned to deal with this case will sign the document and other relevant papers and that is the judgement – end of story.

As a onetime activity, link the first databse to the second query and churn out the sentences for all those present in the database. Update it in the same database and consider this as an input as well for the ordnance planned. And of those who are left out in jail and for whom numbers are generated, take a printout and confirm the sentences. All this, again, what is it going to take? A few lines of simple code, humungous amount of database space, manual entry into a form and literally no testing. And if this whole exercise is going to cut down even 5%(I know for sure that the number is going to be much higher than that), is it not worth the effort?