Jail Reforms

A prisoner cannot be made to suffer due to the inadequacy of policies and a firm attitude by the court was needed to "awaken the relaxed authorities from their slack approach" towards prisoners' fundamental rights, the Delhi High Court has observed. The court made the observations while issuing a slew of guidelines for quantifying and assessing the compensation to be paid to a prisoner for injuries sustained while working in jail. In case a convict suffers work-related amputation or a life-threatening injury, the court said, the jail superintendent will be duty-bound to inform the concerned jail inspecting judge within 24 hours of the incident. A three-member committee comprising Director General (Prisons) of Delhi, medical superintendent of a government hospital and secretary of Delhi State Legal Services Authority (DSLSA) of the concerned district will be constituted to assess and quantify the compensation to be paid to the victim, it said. The court also said that interim ...

By allowing corporate entities to manage separate jails for undertrials, state governments could free up to 70 per cent capacity in India's notoriously overcrowded prisons

The bench was hearing a matter relating to inhuman conditions in 1,382 prisons across India