Behind Bars: Understanding and Addressing Prison Crimes

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Although the Indian legal system is widely regarded as a staunch advocate of the law of reform doctrine, is it actually as effective in practise as it is in theory? Is it really justified to deny prisoners access to the most basic living circumstances, even though most of the time, inmates are people who have broken the law, and no one would want to go gentle on them?

CONDITIONS OF PRISONERS:

  • The prison system in the Indian context is deteriorating with time, the kind of crimes being committed against the prisoners are something to give a meticulous thought upon and find a solution. All these things simply lead to one thing and that is blurring the distinction between a death sentence and a prison sentence and that is indeed putting the concept of law of reform in jeopardy.
  • The prisoners already don’t have an access to the outer world or the liberty to be with their families and friends or to live a normal life like everyone else but with all these crimes against them is now just robbing them of a chance to be a human being even.

CRIMES AGAINST PRISONERS:

  • We find end number of cases where the prisoners are being exploited to an extreme level, a large number of prison deaths have been recorded in the past decade, raising a lot of questions. According to the international law, detainees have a right to defence against aggression like rape, assault and torture, which clearly states the fact the prisoners at the end of the day are humans and mustn’t be deprive of their basic human rights.
  • The kind of treatment prisoners have to go through is snatching away any chance of reform that they might have. When we dig further to get to the ground level reality there have been instances where several prisoners were beaten to death due to some gang feuds and it was later on marked as some medical malfunction. When speaking of the prison system in the Indian context, there’s only 1 prison guard appointed to monitor 7 prisoners. All these factors turn out to be a major cause of concern.
  • Moreover, when we move further from the discussion of crimes committed against them, there’s the point where the prisoners are not even provided with basic hygiene, food and medical facilities which yet again leads to a number of cases where the prisoners develop some sort of serious medical problem and sometimes due to the medical negligence, even die.

 CONCLUSION:

To conclude my point I’d say that the good order and security of the prisons may be improved because it’s time we take some step forward to curb the increasing number of offences against the prisoners. And for that a number of things could be done to at least take an initiative, for instance, reducing the interaction of prisoners with each other and with the staff as much as possible, resource allocation to provide meaningful employment, education and recreational activities should be done. Subsequently, all the factors are must be taken into consideration to provide the prisoners a chance to have a life and feel human.

By:

Richa Pandey

INBA Intern