The prison system and prison reforms in India

1. Prisons as a State subject

“Prisons, reformatories, Borstal institutions and other institutions of a like nature, and persons detained therein” is Entry 4 of List II of the Seventh Schedule. Each State therefore runs its own prisons under its own Act, rules and manual. The Union's role is to advise, fund modernisation and frame model laws. The central statutes still in force are the Prisons Act, 1894, the Prisoners Act, 1900 and the Transfer of Prisoners Act, 1950. Karnataka has its own Karnataka Prisons Act, 1963 and rules made under it.

2. History of the Indian prison

• Before the British: imprisonment was mainly custody pending trial or punishment; the punishment itself was usually fine, corporal or death.
• Prison Discipline Committee, 1836–38, set up at Macaulay's instance: found conditions corrupt and lax, and recommended stricter discipline, hard labour and the building of central jails. Its emphasis was deterrence, not reform.
• Committees of 1864, 1877 and 1889 led to the Prisons Act, 1894, which regulated jail management, classification, discipline and prison offences. It is still the framework in many States.
• Indian Jails Committee, 1919–20 (Cardew Committee): the first to say that reformation and rehabilitation are objects of prison administration. It recommended separation of juveniles and undertrials, trained staff, education and after-care, and opposed transportation to the Andamans.
• All India Jail Manual Committee, 1957–59: prepared a Model Prison Manual and recommended a correctional approach, open institutions and a national policy.
• All India Committee on Jail Reforms, 1980–83 (Mulla Committee): recommended a new national prison law, an Indian Prisons and Correctional Service, separation of undertrials, improved food and health care, an end to overcrowding, open prisons, and a statutory board of visitors. It also recommended that prisons be moved to the Concurrent List.
• National Expert Committee on Women Prisoners, 1987 (Krishna Iyer Committee): recommended women staff, separate institutions for women, and attention to children of women prisoners.

3. The Model Prison Manual, 2016

The Ministry of Home Affairs circulated the Model Prison Manual, 2016 to the States to replace the 2003 manual. It covers custody and classification, legal aid, medical care, education and vocational training, prison labour with wages, the welfare of women prisoners and children, open institutions, after-care, and grievance redressal. The Supreme Court, in its continuing proceedings on prison conditions, has pressed the States to adopt and follow it.

4. The Model Prisons and Correctional Services Act, 2023

In May 2023 the Ministry of Home Affairs released the Model Prisons and Correctional Services Act, 2023 and advised the States to adopt it, in place of the colonial Acts. It is a model, not a statute: it has legal effect in a State only when that State legislates. Its main features are:

• a correctional objective, with prisons renamed correctional institutions;
• classification and separation of prisoners, and high-security prisons for dangerous and habitual offenders;
• open and semi-open correctional institutions for low-risk prisoners;
• a framework for parole, furlough and premature release, with incentives for good conduct;
• use of technology: video-conferencing for trials, electronic monitoring of prisoners on leave, and integrated records;
• special provision for women, transgender prisoners and those with mental illness;
• vocational training, skill development and after-care for reintegration.

Its critics note that it adds security and surveillance measures at the same time as correctional ones, and that its success depends on State adoption and funding.

5. Is the jail a reformative institution?

In principle, yes. The goal of imprisonment under the Model Prison Manual and the 2023 model law is correction, and the courts have said that a prisoner retains all his fundamental rights except those taken away by the fact of lawful imprisonment (Sunil Batra, 1978). The instruments of reform are:

• classification, so that first offenders are not mixed with hardened criminals;
• education and vocational training, and work paid at fair wages;
• counselling, de-addiction and medical care;
• contact with family through visits, letters, parole and furlough;
• graded release through open prisons and after-care.

In practice the problems are well known: overcrowding, a majority of inmates who are undertrials rather than convicts, shortage of staff and of trained correctional staff, custodial violence, poor health care, and caste-based work allocation, struck down in Sukanya Shantha v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 753, where the Court held provisions of State prison manuals that divided labour and segregated barracks by caste violative of Articles 14, 15, 17, 21 and 23, and directed their revision. In Re Inhuman Conditions in 1382 Prisons, 2017 INSC 955, the Court, faced with occupancy above 150 per cent in some prisons, reiterated that undertrials and convicts have fundamental and human rights and directed the States to prepare plans to reduce overcrowding.

How this is examined

“How do you consider jail as a reformative institute?” (August 2024, 10 marks) and “Prison reforms” in older papers. For the jail-as-reformative question, open with the shift from custody to correction, set out the instruments of reform in section 5, show the gap with Sukanya Shantha and the overcrowding orders, and close with the 2023 model Act. For a prison reforms essay, the committees in section 2 are the core; examiners expect at least the 1919–20 Committee, the Mulla Committee and the Krishna Iyer Committee by name. The role of the judiciary is in the next note.