This open prison allows inmates to live with family and go out to work!

There is a two-room home in this prison, where a convicted prisoner lives with his/her family
and can step outside the premises to work.

India Today Web Desk

New Delhi
September 14, 2018
UPDATED: September 14, 2018 16:46 IST

Inmates in the open prison are allowed to go outside the premises to work at 8 am and are
required to return by 6 pm.
Imagine a prison. A dark, concrete cell with limited space, which the inmates cannot claim as
their own, little choice over food and who to be with, threat and suspicion abound.
At an open prison in Indore district of Madhya Pradesh, this stereotype of a prison withers away.
What is Indore's open prison like?
The open prison has been started under the administrative supervision of the Indore District Jail.
In this prison, there is a two-room home, where a convicted prisoner lives with his/her family
and can step outside the premises to work.
The prison is named Devi Ahilyabai Open Colony and is near the district jail of Indore city.
It has been started with an aim to bring a positive change in the lives of the inmates there.
At present, 10 married prisoners have been given independent apartments.
In one these apartments, Bhupendra Singh has started to settle with his family since last week.

Handicraft and gift items prepared by female inmates during art and craft bazar outside the
district jail on August 9, 2014 in Indore. (Image: Getty)
Singh's imprisonment
Singh, a resident of Shajapur town in Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh, was arrested in
connection with the killing of a youth in 1996.
He was later given a life sentence.
The 45-year-old has spent more than 12 years of his life in various prisons of the state.
Singh's experience in Indore's open jail
"I still have to spend some more time in prison. But since I have come to this open jail, I
feel I have been released. I regret what I did and now I want to live a normal life," Singh
told PTI-Bhasha.
"As I am allowed to visit outside for work, I am planning to open a kiosk in the city where I
want to sell tea and snacks," he said.
Singh's wife Seema, 35, lives with him in the open prison.
The couple has two children, who study outside Indore.
From the next academic session, the children are likely to be admitted to a local school and they
would be able to live together with their parents in the open prison.
"I have stayed away from my husband for years and raised my sons. We are happy we
would be able to live together now," Seema said.
Why this open jail experiment is the best option
 District and Sessions Judge Rajeev Kumar Shrivastava praised the experiment to give inmates
some liberty to live their life.
"Sometimes, people commit serious crimes out of short-lived anger. When these people
remain in prison for a long duration, they become inclined to revolt against the social
system, develop negative feelings. To shield them from these negative feelings and ensure
their social integration, this experiment of open jails is the best option," Shrivastava said.
"When these prisoners will walk [out] of the open jail, they will be better equipped to
accept the society and the society too will have a better understanding about them," he
added.
Not all prisoners go to the open jail
The district jail superintendent Aditi Chaturvedi said, "This experiment has been started
following the instructions of high court. The inmates in the open prison are those who have
been given life sentence but have behaved well and are to be released in one or two years
after completion of their term."
Limitations on open jail prisoners
 She said the inmates in the open prison are allowed to go outside the premises to work at
8 am and are required to return by 6 pm
 They are not allowed to breach the city limits
 Chaturvedi said the open prison administration has tried to ensure the environment inside
the premises remain true to its name
 Still, she added, three guards have been deployed for the security of the inmates and their
family
 The guards keep a record of all visitors
India's first open jail for women
India's first open jail for women was inaugurated at the Yerawada Central Prison in Pune in
March 2010 on the occasion of International Women's Day by the then Maharashtra Home
Minister RR Patil.

Yerawada Central Prison in Pune where the first open jail for women was opened in 2010.
Women in the open jail do agricultural work on the 17 acres of land adjoining the prison to
improve their physical and mental wellbeing.
They are also eligible for remission in their punishment; for every one year served in the open
jail, a year of their sentence is reduced.
Additionally, they are also trained in other skills such as candle-making, screen printing, etc to
help them start a new life after being released from jail.

What is an open prison?

Rajasthan Prison Rules define open jail as, "Prisons without walls, bars and locks." The jail
does not confine them completely but requires them to earn their living to support their
families, living with them inside the jail.
Written by Sonakshi Awasthi |New Delhi |Updated: December 13, 2017 12:51:31 pm

 

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Open prisons have relatively less stringent rules as compared to the controlled jails. They go by many names like minimum-
security prison, open air camps or prison without bars. (For representational purposes. Source: Wikemedia Commons)
The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the Centre to hold meetings with prison officials
across the states and the Union Territories in the first week of February to set up open
prisons in the country. The issue came up when the court was hearing a PIL on the poor
state of the prisons in the country.
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Prisons in India are governed by the Prisons Act, 1900 and each state follows their prison
rules and manuals. India has a maximum number of central jails, sub jails, which are
controlled jails, and 63 open jails according to the amicus curiae in the case above.
What are open prisons?
Open prisons have relatively less stringent rules as compared to the controlled jails. They
go by many names like minimum-security prison, open air camps or prison without bars.
The fundamental rule of an open prison is that the jail has minimum security and functions
on the self-discipline of the inmates.
Every state in India has a prison law, like the Rajasthan Prisoners Rules and Andhra
Pradesh Prison Rules, 1979. Seventeen states are reported to have functional open jails
with Rajasthan having 29 such prisons, the highest that any state has.
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The Rajasthan Prisoners Open Air Camp Rules, 1972 define open prison as, “prisons
without walls, bars and locks.” Inmates in Rajasthan open prisons are free to go out of the
prison after a first roll call and have to return before the allotted second roll call. The jail
does not confine them completely but requires them to earn their living to support their
families, living with them inside the jail.
The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, popularly
known as the Nelson Mandela Rules, laid down the objectives of open prisons stating, that
such prisons provide no physical security against escape but rely on the self-discipline of
the inmates, provide the conditions most favourable to the rehabilitation of carefully selected
prisoners.
The All-India Committee on Jail Reform constituted in 1980 recommended the government
to set up and develop open prisons in each state and UT similar to the Sanganer open
camp. Sanganer open camp is the largest open prison in Rajasthan and houses nearly 400
prisoners. The Committee also stated the number of open prisons and prisoners each state
has.
Who are eligible for open prisons?
Every state law defines the eligibility criteria of inmates who can be in an open prison. The
principal rule is that an inmate eligible for open air prison has to be a convict. Good conduct
in prison and at least five years spent in a controlled jail are the rules followed by the
Rajasthan open prisons. The Rajasthan open prison do not take in undertrial prisoners. The
Rajasthan Prison Rules also specify the ineligibility criteria for admission of inmates in open
prison.
The All-India Committee on Jail Reform too recommended that life convicts who offer good
prognosis should be transferred to semi-open & open prisons.

Here's why open prisons are the

solution to India's overcrowded
prisons
In December 2017, the Supreme Court asked states to establish an open prison in each district based on a 2017
report that detailed the success of Rajasthan's open jail system
Charu Bahri | IndiaSpend  |  Udaipur Last Updated at October 7, 2018 21:29 IST

 
 Representative Image. Photo: Shutterstock

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

Kalu Tulsiram*, 35, a bespectacled, serious-looking man, was brewing tea at a stall near the Udaipur central bus
depot on a recent monsoon day. It was close to noon, a busy time for the tea stalls lining the main road. A few metres
away, Deepak Lalaprasad*, 33, heavier built and more relaxed in demeanour, was helming another stall, waiting for a
customer.

Casual passersby or customers could never guess that these two men were convicts serving life sentences under
Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code of 1860--for murder.

Since 2014, Kalu and Deepak have been living in an open prison in Udaipur, having conducted themselves well for
10 years in conventional prisons. Inmates at this prison are permitted to stay with their families and go out during the
day to earn a living. As many as 1,127 prisoners in 29 open jails in Rajasthan work as accountants, school teachers,
domestic help and security guards, even those serving time for murder.

Not only do these prisons present an early opportunity for prisoners’ reform and rehabilitation back into society, they
also cost less in terms of money and staff, a 2017 report on Rajasthan’s open prisons said, based on which the
Supreme Court in May 2018 ordered state governments to fully utilise and expand the capacity of open prisons as
well as set up more open prisons.

Why open prisons

Conceptually, open prisons were developed to rehabilitate prisoners who had almost completed their sentence. In the
earliest open prisons developed in the US in the 19th century, prisoners nearing release were sent to work as
labourers to evaluate their behaviour. In India, the earliest open prison established in 1953 in Uttar Pradesh housed
prisoners who were requisitioned to construct a dam over the river Chandraprabha, near Varanasi.

It was in Rajasthan's first open prison--a farm set up in Durgapura near Jaipur in 1955--that prisoners were first
allowed to stay with their families and work on the farm or nearby.

In December 2017, the Supreme Court asked states to establish an open prison in each district based on a
2017 report that detailed the success of Rajasthan’s open jail system. It followed up this suggestion with an order on
May 8, 2018, asking states to “try and utilise the capacity of these open prisons”--which number 63 and have a
capacity of 5,370, but have 30 per cent seats unutilised--adding that states should consider increasing the capacity of
existing open prisons and “seriously consider the feasibility of establishing open prisons in as many locations as
possible”.

In creating open prisons where the rehabilitation of prisoners could start from the day they are incarcerated, instead
of after they have served the greater part of their sentence, India would not become any less safe, the report
mentioned above showed.

Commissioned by the Rajasthan State Legal Services Authority and released on National Law Day--November 26--in
2017, the report showed that open prisons “reduce the burden on the exchequer”, “reduce overcrowding in prisons”
and “strengthen the social fabric by mainstreaming estranged individuals who are in conflict with the law”, to quote
Kalpesh Satyendra Jhaveri, executive chairperson of the authority, who commissioned the report. He is now the chief
justice of the Odisha High Court.

‘Not a threat to society’

Consider this scenario: A man’s daughter is raped. The man murders the rapist to avenge the crime. He is put in jail
to serve a life sentence. The man is a murderer alright, but to what extent is he a threat to society now that he has no
motive to kill?

Very low, according to prison researcher Smita Chakraburtty: “Seeing all prisoners through the same lens doesn’t
help use the limited funds available for prisons judiciously.”
Or, consider how Kalu landed up in jail: “I squabbled with a man over a piece of land,” he told IndiaSpend. “I had a
piece of wood in my hand, so did the man I murdered, we were beating each other,” said the native of Ghosunda
village, in Chittorgarh tehsil of Rajasthan.

In the scuffle, the opponent got hit on the head and died, and Kalu became a murderer. “I hadn’t planned on killing
the man,” Kalu said.

Such accidental or unplanned murderers constituted 57 per cent (244) of the 428 prisoners Chakraburtty met during
her visits to 15 of 29 open prisons in Rajasthan. She spoke to 90 per cent of the inmates, except those out on work
during her visit, so the 57 per cent figure is fairly representative. Eighty-one per cent (347 of 428) of the prisoners
were also first-time offenders, with no previous police record.

This situation is mirrored in prisons across the country. Habitual offenders or ‘recidivists’ accounted for 3 per cent of
the 186,566 convicts admitted in prisons across the country during 2015, according to the National Crime Records
Bureau’s (NCRB) prison statistics for that year.

“Repeat offenders are the ones with real ‘criminal minds’, who pose a threat to society and hence must be kept in
closed jails, but they are also the ones who need reform and rehabilitation the most,” Udaipur Central Jail
superintendent Surendra Singh told IndiaSpend.

Often, people are incarcerated merely due to lack of awareness of the law, Chakraburtty said, citing as an example
people imprisoned in Rajasthan for possession of opium. This reflects a lack of understanding of the nature of their
offence, she said, “Because their communities have had access to opium since time immemorial, and they have no
idea of the prevailing laws.”

The possession of any narcotic is a non-bailable offence under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act
of 1985. However, the cultivation of opium is permitted, under license, in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar
Pradesh.

Apart from offenders who are psychopaths or who have performed exceptionally brutal crimes, most prisoners do not
need to be removed from society, Chakraburtty said. They need to be watched over, made aware of their crime and
rehabilitated.

“Justice is not revenge. It has to work for the victim as much as for the perpetrator,” Chakraburtty said, “If society
responds with more violence, the prisoner develops vengeance for society and comes out hardened. If we ignore a
prisoner’s need to earn a livelihood for his family, a man could enter the prison as a rapist and leave as a gangster.”

Open jails and prisoner behaviour

 At Udaipur’s open air
camp for prisoners (open
prison for short), a roll-call
each morning and evening
keeps a count of the
prisoners.

Overall, 1 in 45 prisoners in
Rajasthan’s open prisons
absconded from parole or
escaped, while the all-India
figure for closed prisons is 1
in 481, as per 2015 prison
data. Chakraburtty’s report
attributed most of the
escapes from open prisons
to “problems related to
procuring parole and
remission”--in other words,
due to prisoners’ failure to
furnish a bail bond, or due
to adverse reports by police
personnel willing to err on
the side of caution.

“Administrative issues
regarding parole are a common problem in prisons across India, and should be addressed,” said R.K. Saxena, former
inspector general of prisons, Rajasthan, and the director of the 1982-83 Justice Mulla Committee on Prison Reforms.
“Parole is a prisoners’ right, a conditional release and an opportunity for prisoners to assimilate into society.”

The report made several suggestions that would improve parole administration and thereby lower the number of
prisoners recorded as having escaped. These are: Reducing the bond amount; encouraging personal bonds instead
of requiring guarantors (unless a prisoner misbehaves); considering a prisoner’s behaviour alone based on social
welfare department statements instead of police reports for the second parole onwards.

The police, on their part, could be sensitised on the role of open prisons in prisoner reform so that they make
unbiased investigation reports when parole applications come up.

“A proactive approach in addressing the rights of prisoners is much needed,” said Ajay Chopra, an artist and social
worker who was imprisoned in 2017 on corruption charges but was released on bail after three months. He now
campaigns for greater acceptance of open prisons, especially after the Supreme Court’s endorsement. “A positive
mindset towards prisoners is essential for prisoner reform,” he said.
Prisoners in Rajasthan’s open prisons have generally conducted themselves well, Chakraburtty told IndiaSpend.
“Open jails in Rajasthan are doing something very right,” said Chakraburtty, a leading prison researcher and honorary
prison commissioner for the aforementioned report, “Prison authorities have actually had to evict open jail inmates
who asked for extensions after they had served their sentence because their children’s exams were approaching or
because they were receiving decent medical care as convicts.”

In conversation with IndiaSpend, Kalu and Deepak, who are among 24 prisoners currently lodged in the Udaipur
open prison, emphasised that a life of crime was far from their minds.

“Hotel business” is how Kalu described his tea stall work, something he said he wanted to continue doing after he
was freed.

“I’d like to live in peace and work,” said Deepak about his plans after his prison term.

Segmenting by threat level

Rajasthan’s open prison system is considered a best practice in prisoners’ welfare and rehabilitation in the NCRB’s
2015 prison statistics. It has been acclaimed for “facilitating social adjustment and financial independence” of
prisoners before their final release. Eligibility typically extends to “prisoners who have completed their one-third part
of total sentence and whose conduct in the jail was found good”, subject to the “recommendation of the committee
formed by the State government,” the compilation notes.

Chakraburtty has proposed expanding the open prison network across the country to make it the norm instead of the
exception, particularly for female prisoners; aged and physically infirm prisoners; people convicted for one-time
offences, accidental offences, petty offences and those categorised as low risk for not showing any violent trait in
prison; accused persons who surrendered; and prisoners undergoing extradition requests.

While the existing system provides for only convicted prisoners to be kept in open prisons, Chakraburtty has also
recommended extending the facility to undertrials--who account for two in three people in prison in India today--to
significantly lower overcrowding and inhuman living conditions in prisons.

But not everyone agrees with this idea.

“A person is denied bail and sent to judicial custody only when a magistrate has applied his mind and assessed that if
not incarcerated, the evidence may be tampered [with] or investigation hampered, or there is a flight risk, thus
disabling the trial process,” said Sugandha Mathur, senior programme officer for the prison reforms programme at the
Delhi-based advocacy, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. “If none of these reasons exist, an accused should
be released on bail to uphold their right to liberty,” she said, implying that basically if the circumstances warrant bail,
the undertrial should be freed, and if not, the prisoner should be put behind bars and not in an open prison.

Mathur is a member of the sub-committee convened by the Bureau of Police Research and Development in February
2018 to draft the Model Uniform Rules for the Administration of Open Correctional Institutions.
Economic sense, societal benefit

India has 63 open jails with a capacity of 5,370, enough to house 1.28 per cent of the 419,623 prisoners across the
country. However, 30 per cent of their seats are unutilised, the Hindustan Times reported on December 12, 2017.

While Rajasthan tops with 29 open prisons, Maharashtra has 13, Kerala and Tamil Nadu have three each, and
Gujarat and West Bengal have two each, according to Prison Statistics 2015.

The Rajasthan report advocated opening two open prisons per district because they are better suited to prisoner
reform and pose less of a financial burden on the state. By comparing monthly spending on prisoners, it showed that
Jaipur’s Central Jail was 14 times as expensive as its open prison in Sanganer town.

The report also recommended making legal aid and health services available to open prisoners and helping them get
gainful employment by negotiating working hours with potential employers to facilitate their timely return to the camp.
Keeping prisoners in their home district and improving the remuneration for those employed on state farms and
facilities were some other recommendations.

“You can’t put people in prison and expect them to come out as Gandhi after seven (or however many) years unless
the system is conducive to reform, which the existing closed prison system isn’t by any measure,” Chakraburtty
told IndiaSpend, adding, “Open prisons should become the norm, the prisons of the future.”

Why prison reform is needed urgently

The fact remains that overcrowding is a pressing issue involving the “violation of human rights”, to quote the Supreme
Court.

In 2015, the prison occupancy rate exceeded 200 per cent in Dadra and Nagar Haveli (276.7 per cent), Chhattisgarh
(233.9 per cent) and Delhi (226.9 per cent), according to NCRB data. Prisons in another 13 states were full beyond
capacity.

Source: Prison Statistics 2015, National Crime Records Bureau

In a recent TEDx talk, Chakraburtty, who has interacted with 30,070 prisoners lodged in closed jails in Bihar,
described prisons so overcrowded that inmates tied themselves to the bars to sleep because there was no space to
lie down.

Adopting the concept of open prisons--or “semi-open prisons” where eligible convicts could be allowed to work within
the jail premises during the day, or in a factory after making special arrangements for their secured transport, which
Mathur proposed--would free up scarce resources, in terms of funds as well as staff.

The Jaipur Central Jail spends 14 times as much as the Sanganer open prison--Rs 7,094 as against Rs 500--on each
prisoner each month, Chakraburtty’s report said.
In the Sanganer open prison, Rajasthan’s largest with a capacity of 400, one staff-person manages 80 prisoners
while in Jaipur Central Jail, one manages six prisoners (the recommended number is one staff for four prisoners),
Chakraburtty recorded.

Staff shortages are a reality across prisons. In Rajasthan, of the 4,426 sanctioned jail department staff positions,
nearly half or 2,129 are vacant.

“We’re managing roughly 1,250 prisoners with 155 guards today, while in the 1970s we had 165 guards to manage
250 prisoners,” said Singh of Udaipur Central Jail.

Having more open jails would enable better management of closed prisons too.

“If only every state could set time guidelines for parole applications to be processed, and make prisoners aware of
these rights and actively implement them, possibly fewer prisoners would abscond from parole and make open
prisons a stronger proposition in prisoner reform,” Mathur said.