Set up National Task Force to examine challenges in prisons: Parl panel to govt

With increasing evidence of criminal activity on the streets being orchestrated from prison cells, a Parliamentary Standing Committee has asked the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to set up a national task force to examine issues and challenges faced in prisons and create a time-bound action plan to address them.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs led by senior Congress MP Anand Sharma said it has taken “serious note” of criminals operating from prisons with the connivance of a few prison officials.

The MHA informed the panel, which tabled a report on the Demand for Grants for the ministry in Parliament earlier this week, that states and union territories are being given assistance for technologically strengthening and modernising the prisons.

Against this background, the panel recommended that the MHA may set up a national task force to examine issues and challenges being faced in prisons and create a time-bound action plan to address them.

The panel wanted regular inspection by senior officers of prisons, law enforcement agencies and judiciary to keep a check on the activities of prisoners. The Prison Department should appoint well-equipped and trained staff in prisons and ensure tenure-based transfers and posting of prison officials, it said.

The committee also expressed concern on the “very low number” of women prisons vis-a-vis the number of women prisoners, due to which female inmates are kept in separate cells in regular jails.

The panel also recommended that a study be conducted to analyse the number of women prisons in the country, saying that some states didn't have even one. It asked to prepare a roadmap for constructing exclusive women prisons wherever necessary. The panel also instructed the MHA to submit a status report.

The MHA also told the panel that it has come out with a new project – Modernisation of Prisons – for enhancing security measures and bringing in technological intervention in day-to-day administration of prisons with a view to enhance the safety and security of jails as well as its inmates. The latest budget has allocated Rs 400 crore for this project.

States will be given assistance for upgradation of video conferencing infrastructure in prisons, use of body cameras by officials, motivational videos for inmates to leave the life of crime, security gadgets like metal detectors and baggage scanners, correctional programmes and hiring of behavioural experts and psychologists among others.

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