Crime and redemption
Suneet Kaur

ON July 11, 2001, Vipin Kumar, an undertrial, died in Central Jail, Ferozepore, under mysterious circumstances. Rajinder Singh Negi, another undertrial, met his tragic end under unexplained circumstances in the jail last year on July 12. Balbir Singh, son of Basta Singh, also died in jail allegedly due to non-availability of medical treatment and Anwar, son of Fali Ram, died of an illness in jail on June 24 last year. Investigations were conducted and a number of disclosures were made. It was alleged that the prisoners had been tortured and maltreated by the jail authorities.

Instances like the above are said to be fairly common place as is the overcrowding of prisons. For example, there are around 1300 prisoners lodged in Central jail, Patiala, against the maximum capacity of 770. Of the 1300-odd prisoners, 400 live in 300 chhakis for convicts measuring 8 ft x 10 ft and in eight big barracks measuring 20 ft x 80 ft. Owing to the overcrowding, as many as five prisoners each are put in Phansi Kothi and chhaki which are meant to house just two prisoners. Each barrack has a stipulated capacity of 50 but is packed with more than 80 prisoners. There is shortage of sleeping space in all these enclosures. Quite often there have been fights between the prisoners for occupying sleeping space.

As per the Punjab Jail Manual, a convict can work in the 70-acre cultivated land in the jail complex and in the jail factory where cane furniture and many other items are made. Under the Minimum Wages Act, the prisoners are to be paid a wage of Rs 12. An unskilled person is given only Rs 6, semi-skilled worker is given Rs 8 and a person doing paper work and clerical duty is given Rs 10.

The Central Government set up a committee on jail reforms under the chairmanship of Justice A.N. Mullah in 1980. It suggested, "Rates of wages should be fair and equitable and not merely nominal or paltry. These rates should be standardised so as to achieve broad uniformity in wage system in all the prisons in each state and Union Territory."

Justice V.K. Dulzapurkar of the Supreme Court has held in the case reported in C.I.R. 1978 N.V. Krishna Rao versus State of Andhra Pradesh, "The most hurtful part of imprisonment is the initial stage when a person is confined in prison. Thereafter he gets sufficiently hardened and callous with the result that by the time he is processed through the years inside the prison he becomes more dehumanised. The whole goal of punishment being curative is thereby defeated. The accent should be more and more on rehabilitation rather than retributive punitively inside the prison."

Jereme Bentham, who propounded the theory of deterrence, is now considered an apostle of conservative school of thought. Civilised society has realised that retribution cannot solve the problem of escalating criminal offences. V. R. Krishna Iyer has taken pains to depict the reformative profile of the principals of sentences in Mohammed Giasuddin Vs State of Andhra Pradesh, 1977(3) SCC 287: "If the psychic perspective and the spiritual insight we have tried to protect is valid, the police bully and the prison drill cannot minister to a mind diseased, nor tone down the tension, release the repression, unbend the prevention, each of which shows up as debased, deviance, violent vice and behavioural turpitude. It is truism often forgotten in the hidden vendetta in human bosoms, that barbarity breeds barbarity and injury recoils injury so that if healing the mentally or morally maimed or malformed man is the goal, awakening the inner being more than torturing through exterior compulsions holds out better curative hopes."

Freedom behind bars is a part of the constitutional tryst and the index of our collective consciousness. The fundamental fact of prison reforms comes from our constitutional recognition that every prisoner is a person and personhood holds a human potential, which, if unfolded, makes a robber a Valmiki and sinner a saint.

Reformation should hence be the dominant objective of punishment and every effort should be made to change the convicted prisoner for the better. An assurance should be given to him that his hard labour would eventually help him rehabilitate. Reformation and rehabilitation of the prisoner is of great public importance and they serve a public purpose.