Date: 04/01/2023

Relevance: GS-2: Government policies and interventions and issues arising out of their design and implementation; Judiciary; Prisons and related infrastructure; Social empowerment.

Key Phrases: Habitual Offenders Act, Criminal Justice in the Shadow of Caste, Indian Prisons System, Prison Statistics of India (PSI), Article 39A.

Context:

• The Delhi Development Authority (DDA) is constructing a new district prison complex in Narela, Delhi.

Background:

• A few days ago at the Constitution Day celebrations, the President of India reflected on her visits to prisons across India and the circumstances of those incarcerated.
• She highlighted the plight of a large number of undertrials incarcerated, the unawareness of their fundamental rights and emphasized that the judiciary, executive, and legislature must work together to help them.
• However, in stark contrast, the Lieutenant-Governor of Delhi (L-G) has directed the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to allocate 1.6 lakh square metres of land to Delhi’s prison department to build a district prison complex in Narela.

Issues with the new prison architecture

• The prison complex is to be constructed in two phases, the first for high-risk offenders and the second for undertrials.
• Phase 1 will be completed by April 2024 and a high -security jail complex with a capacity to lodge 250 high-risk prisoners will be constructed.
• The prison administration has incorporated stringent security measures in the design such as constructing high walls between cells to prevent inmates from viewing others, and interacting with each other, as well as building office spaces between cells to facilitate surveillance.
• Issues with the prison architecture
  • Architecture of prisons is often used as a tool to surveil, torture, and break the souls of inmates.
  • The proposed architecture creates solitary confinement which will have a severe detrimental effect on prisoners’ mental health.

State of Indian Prisons and administration

• Governed by colonial laws
  • Prisons in India are governed by the Prisons Act, 1894, a colonial legislation which treats prisoners as sub-par citizens, and provides the legal basis for punishment to be retributive, rather than rehabilitative.
  • These laws are also highly casteist, and remain largely unchanged since they were drafted by the British.
  • For example, some jail manuals continue to focus on purity as prescribed by the caste system, and assign work in prison based on the prisoner’s caste identity.
• Over representation of Dalits and tribals in the Indian prisons
  • Dalits and Adivasis are over-represented in Indian prisons.
  • The National Dalit Movement for Justice and the National Centre for Dalit Human Rights’ report ‘Criminal Justice in the Shadow of Caste’ explains the social, systemic, legal, and political barriers that contribute to this.
  • Legislations such as the Habitual Offenders Act and Beggary Laws allow the police to target them for reported crimes.

Way Forward

• Focus on non-carceral ways to reduce the congestion in prisons
  • To decongest Delhi’s prison complexes by setting up prisons in Narela is misguided and is not desirable.
  • As the Indian president said, progress is antithetical to setting up prisons, and we must address congestion in prisons in non-carceral ways.
  • The non-carceral ways could include releasing unwell or old inmates, reducing penalties, allowing bail at affordable costs, employing anti-carceral ways of holding people accountable for their crimes, and expediting trials.
• Approach to crime should be preventive, rather than reactive
  • The primary reason why prisons are overcrowded is because India has not done enough to truly prevent crime.
  • Our approach to crime should be preventive, rather than reactive and therefore instead of investing thousands of crores in finding “state-of the art” means to build such infrastructure work the government should work on welfare obligations of the state.
• Improve public goods and welfare to discourage crimes
  • The government should work to channel public funds towards public goods such as housing, education, and employment, so that people would not be as compelled to, or have as much proclivity to commit crimes.
• Prison architecture and administration can be changed for a larger good
  • Students at the Yale School of Architecture in 2017 presented designs of prison facilities to house extraordinarily violent offenders.
  • Their models featured open and communal space, fresh air, and spaces for family visits and therapy.
  • Their versions of prisons looked like university campuses, health and wellness facilities, monasteries, and communal complexes emphasizing the need to break away from the traditional conception of prisons as mere warehouses and cages, even for the most violent inmates.

Conclusion

• We must take preventive measures before we realize that we have gone on a wrong path and have subjected several people to unnecessary trauma and confinement.
• As Justice U.U. Lalit recently quoted Oscar Wilde while commuting a death sentence that we must recognize that ‘Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future’ should be imbibed along with President Murmu’s message on the need to de-carcerate and stop building more prisons could be a guiding principle.

Source: The Hindu

Mains Question:

Q. Infrastructure and governance shortcomings in the Indian system have led to overcrowding and lack of proper medical health facilities in prisons which is the violation of the right to life of inmates. Discuss. Also write on the need of improving prison governance through reskilling, education and vocational training of inmates. (250 words)