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K.V.REDDYPRESIDENTALL INDIA PRISON OFFICERS ASSOCIATIONE-Mail:kvreddydsp@yahoo.comMobile: 09849904733 / 09440060055www.poaap.com
Victims of apathy
Commitment needed to reform prisons
I
T is only when a jailbreak occurs that the issue of prison reforms comes to the fore. Thelow priority given to prisoners is reflected in the general indifference and apathy towardsprison administration. The recent disturbances in Jalandhar jail have once again focusedattention on prison administration and the need for jail reforms.Prison disturbances in some countries have led to drastic changes in jail administration.Though the prison riots in Manchester (UK) in 1991 led to the Lord Justice Woolf InquiryReport which brought out significant changes in the UK’s prison administration, the samecannot be said in the case of India. The approach there was one of openness, transparencyand willingness to acknowledge that things are wrong in the system and the need for coursecorrections. Such an approach is totally missing in our country.In the seventies, when prisoners in Charles Street Jails, Boston (US), voiced protests oversqualid conditions, a judge spent a night inside the jail to get a first-hand feel of theenvironment and ordered the closure of the jail. If grievances are not properly addressed,the only way prisoners can bring them to notice is through disruptive behaviour.The jailbreaks in Dantwara, Chhattisgarh, Burail in Chandigarh, prison disturbances in Biharand Uttar Pradesh or custodial deaths in the Tihar jail have focused attention on prisonreforms. Inquiry reports into these incidents are shrouded in secrecy and no significantsystemic improvement has taken place. Those in charge know what is wrong. Yet, why afterdiagnosis, the disease is allowed to continue? India has one of the lowest rates of imprisonment, 30 per 1 lakh population — the most depressing state of affairs in its prisons.The present prison infrastructure is ill-suited to meet the basic needs, let alone theStandard Minimum Rules in Treatment of Offenders. Our prisons are badly overcrowded andover 70 per cent of the inmates are undertrials. Overcrowding exacerbates the pains of imprisonment and adds to the administrative problems. It also raises the collectivefrustration of the inmates being locked up and not having a place to sleep or being given asleeping place near the stinking, leaking toilet. Taking turns to sleep and spending countlessnights will be dehumanising.No privacy, no dignity and the hope of early release may fade soon. If one is an undertrial,the time period is without a calendar. Though undertrials don’t have to work, such confinedidleness makes a dent on their personality. Judges should know the costs — economic,social and psychological — of incarceration. There must also be cheaper sentencing optionsavailable to them, community service scheme being one such alternative.
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