New jail manual on the cards

The Jail Manual or Prison Rules is being amended by the state home department

The Jail Manual or Prison Rules is being amended by the state home department. The new manual will have a chapter on de-radicalisation of those convicted for terror or divisive activities, a second one on transgender inmates and another for women and children, among other additions.

HT Image

A meeting to revisit the manual was held by additional chief secretary (jails), Shyam Tagde, with a committee of home department and jail officers, on Tuesday. The updated manual will be ready by the end of November. Thereafter, it will be sent to the state law and judiciary department for review.

The manual was last amended in 1979. In 2018, the Supreme Court had appointed the prison reforms committee, while hearing a matter related to inhumane conditions in 1,382 prisons across the country and overcrowding in jails.

“We will source from the Justice B Radhakrishnan committee report and the model prison manual issued by the Centre. I also wish to start Vipassana and meditation in all jails,” said Tagde, about the new endeavour.

There will be a chapter on electronic surveillance in jails and surveillance by drones to keep an eye on areas of jails that are spread out over several acres and difficult for constables to patrol. Also, during the pandemic, jail authorities allowed convicts to speak to their relatives from a phone in the jail, as a trial. This will be included as a rule in the manual.

There will be an emphasis on decongesting jails. The Arthur Road Jail in Mumbai has nearly 3500 undertrials and convicts, as against a capacity of 804. The state home department had shortlisted a plot in Mankhurd, but a chunk of it was taken by MMRDA. In the end of October, the department again wrote to the collectors of Mumbai city and suburbs to select an alternate plot.

Separate cells will be advocated for transgenders as they often face abuse in jails. Reforms for children of women convicts in jails will be another addition, with focus on providing them soft clothes, vaccination and medication. A member of the committee said, “Ideally, I wanted visits by partners of convicts for conjugal rights by spouses. But our prisons only consist of barracks which are meant to restrict movements and there is no privacy.”

A chapter on staffing patterns in the jail department headquarters in Pune will be another inclusion. “At present, we have an additional director general of police, a deputy inspector general and the rest is managed by clerks and a promotee administrative officer. We wish to include uniformed officers as they understand needs of the prisons,” a jail department official said.