Comfortably furnished house, family to live with, a cell phone, a vehicle and a job to serve…….doesn’t it sound like the life that one of us lead. Contrary to our expectation, it is a kind of life a prisoner lives in an ‘open jail’. India, in her tendency to ape the West, has gone ahead to escalate the living conditions of prisoners in this country by adopting the open jail system in some states.

Far away from the concept of  ‘behind bars’, one- room cells, high walls and security, the idea of ‘open jail’ is a breakthrough in the history of jails in India. There are 27 such jails across this country. One of the earliest one was established at Sanganer, in Rajasthan. It was started by the Rajasthan Government as experimentation in 1963. However, it proved to be a great success and the government has planned for 10 more such jails to be established, one for each district in the state. There are about 504 inmates across 13 open jails in the state.

The essential pre- requisites for being a part of an ‘open jail’ is that the prisoner should have served in a regular jail for a minimum of six years and they must be noted for good conduct. Moreover, a prisoner should not be a rapist or a serial killer. These jails are generally designed for so-called ‘white-collar’ criminals. The main objective for the intro duction of such a system is to prepare the inmates to get enmeshed into the societal life. Precisely, the purpose is rehabilitation.

The best part about the open jail is that one gets to live with his/her family. The inmates are given a specific time period within which they are given the liberty to earn a living for themselves either by engaging in jobs in the nearby industries or by initiating their own business. With whatever they earn, they are able to build their houses and fulfill other basic needs of life. The inmates are supposed to return to the campus of the jail within the time limit and ‘head counts’ are conducted in the evening to ensure whether all the inmates are back to the campus. Though families can move in and out, the inmates are not permitted to stay out at night.  The open jail system does not have a segregated living area for men and women. Infact, marriage, between inmates take place. If inmates are found flouting any rules, they are sent back to the regular jail.

The Human Rights Commission must be quite satisfied to see that the government has improvised on the treatment of prisoners in India. However, I find the system of open jail a little too lenient towards the prisoners. If that’s the kind of facility provided for taking someone’s life or doing some other grave crime then nobody would batter an eye before committing an offence punishable by law. This system gives an easy way to the prisoners to escape the punishment which they truly deserve. Few years of regular jail and then a life which is a whisker close to normal living………is that the only price one has to pay for doing something illegal? Another astonishing factor is that a killer, and not a ‘serial killer’, is only qualified to be a part of this privileged space for prisoners. A killer remains a killer, irrespective of the number of killing he has indulged in. Lastly, the open jails being initially introduced for the ‘white-collar’ criminals rules out the idea of ‘equality before law’, which is the true essence of the judicial system of the country. In the attempt to improve the treatment of prisoners in the jail, the open jail structure somehow hints to be an unfair and partial system.

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written by umbrella, February 28, 2010

Open jails in India?!! this is indeed news to me. Well..whenever we start doing somth with good intent, it always get exploited by the unavoidable loopholes by others. Maybe we should consider this 'open jails' in the same spirit as 'let the doubt favour the accused'.

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