Closing Study on the Functioning of the Criminal Justice Chain

Project objectives: Improve judicial governance for faster, more independent, impartial, gender-sensitive, digital and citizen-friendly justice.

In particular:

Analyse the impact of the activities carried out by the project on:

The application and applicability of the penal code and the code of criminal procedure;

The coherence of roles and responsibilities of actors involved in the criminal justice chain, from the roles and responsibilities of judicial police officers (OPJ) to those of magistrates in charge of criminal investigation and trial, and their interrelation;

The coherence and articulation of processes and procedures used in criminal matters, their appropriation by actors (OPJ, magistrates, lawyers, prisons) and their relevance in the logic of improving the functioning of the criminal justice chain.

Assess the scope of solutions implemented to address challenges encountered;

Identify persistent bottlenecks and remaining challenges in the functioning of the criminal justice chain and compare them with those identified in the initial 2024 study;

Identify good practices and opportunities that can be replicated at national level to improve the effectiveness of the criminal justice chain;

For the 5 jurisdictions targeted by the study, assess the level of judicial backlog and the nature of offences to which it corresponds, as well as the processing times for criminal cases at each stage of the procedure, compare them with those recorded in 2024 and collect explanations for the results obtained;

Review and evaluate the evolution of indicators proposed in the initial 2024 study to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the action and collect explanations for the trends identified;

Evaluate the relevance of structural and/or organisational reforms initiated to improve the functioning of the criminal justice chain in the area of action;

Assess the appropriation of recommendations issued, their possible application by authorities and jurisdictions, and their impact on the functioning of the criminal justice chain in Burundi;

Evaluate the perception of justice by litigants in the 4 provinces covered by the evaluation.