What do the people of the world (World Affairs Forum) think about it?
Quiet prevalent in many developing countries is this idea of putting someone in jail for their own protection. A person who has rebelled against the closed society (village) he lives in & has a potential of being hurt by many- the police will put him in jail with the justification of calming things down. Minorities living in such areas when get persecuted are put in jail also for the same reason.
I find great objection to this on the grounds of individual freedom. Also that the law of the society should protect all individuals not just the majority. If the person himself hasn’t done anything wrong but a mob/family/group of people (regardless of how large the group maybe) are threatening him/her then the law enforcement should be put behind bars the group, not the individual(s) who are being threatened.
I agree that "protective custody" is a weird concept.
At the same time, the police will probably not want to arrest all those who threaten an individual, as that means lowering the standards of evidence and presumption of guilt (he said-she said, basically).
So, as an example, if a person commits (or is alleged to have committed) blasphemy, if he is not put in protective custody, he may be killed by someone. What good will it do, if police arrests 100 people who threaten the guy who committed blasphemy and next day he still turns up dead (killed by the 101st person who didn't threaten but merely decided to act). Many would argue that death by a murderer is a far worse fate than being put in jail!
A compromise will be to put these people in protective custody in the so-called "safe-houses" and not in the jail. In western countries, such "safe houses" are frequently used in witness protection programs. In Pakistan, with limited resources, this may prove to be financially impractical.
In some respects, this type of action may have been a secondary effect of American camps for the Japanese Nissei in WWII. Their property was confiscated too, though. It was done on wide scale, as well. It surely wasn't the prime motivation.