‘When I was in a closed prison I was not allowed to step out of my cell. The latrine was also inside my cell...When my family came to visit, I could only meet them for 10 minutes.….When I shifted to the open prison, I contacted my son using the guard’s phone. The moment he saw me, he burst into tears and said, ‘Ab sab theek ho jaayega!’ (Everything will be alright now!)…Heaven and Hell. That is the difference between a closed prison and an open prison.’
This is the story of Surendra Mohan Singh, an inmate lodged at Sanganer’s Open Prison in Jaipur, Rajasthan, shared by Prison Aid+ Action Research (PAAR), a non-profit organization working on prison reforms and open prison advocacy.
On 28 January, Supreme Court Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Aniruddha Bose and S.Ravindra Bhat, made an unprecedented visit, along with a few judges from the Rajasthan High Court, to the Sanganer Open Prison to celebrate Patang, a festival hosted by PAAR to bring awareness to open prisons.
They were impressed with the humane atmosphere of the prison, and Justice Bose remarked that ‘open camps’ would be a better way to describe this set-up which looked nothing like conventional prisons, sans iron cages, big locks, uniforms, and constant surveillance.
This experiential learning led the judges to reiterate that such prisons should be adopted more widely across states, and be available to a broader range of people.
Background
In India, prisons continue to be governed by an antiquated legislation, that was instituted by the British – the Prisons Act, 1894 – in line with colonial reliance on upper-caste male-centric ideas.
It has not been subsequently changed enough to accommodate the experiences of women or transgender inmates, which are significantly different from those of their male counterparts. Meanwhile, Prison Manuals across most states in India continue to divide prison labour according to the caste of inmates.
We need to move away from the colonial conception of prisons, both architecturally and more substantively, and proceed towards a more rehabilitative, community-centric approach of open prisons, where incarcerated people are treated with dignity.
In fact, in December 2017, the Indian Supreme Court had asked states to establish an open prison in each district. Their direction was based on a 2017 report that detailed the success of Rajasthan’s open prison system.
However, this direction has not been implemented yet, with the occupancy rate of open prisons at a dismal 49.5 percent, while overcrowding in many closed prisons continues to be a frightening reality.
According to the latest National Crime Records Bureau’s Report on Prisons (PSI 2021 Report), India currently has about 88 open prisons, with the majority of such prisons in the state of Rajasthan.
Though one of the earliest open prison was set-up to provide cheap labour to construct a dam in Uttar Pradesh in 1953, the rehabilitation-oriented model of open prisons quickly became popular, also owing to the visionary former governor of Rajasthan, Dr. Sampurnanand actively promoting the shift to open prisons during his tenure (1962 -1967).
Rehabilitation and Reintegration
Prisoners are ordinary human beings, who are subject to stigma and hostility for their worst mistake, without being provided with the resources to address what caused them to commit such mistakes in the first place- whether mental health issues, poverty, isolation, homelessness, or lack of education.
Ajit Singh, Former Director General of Police (Rajasthan), much like many scholars, in fact believes that the state through closed prisons reproduces criminality. When you cage people and subject them to squalor, violence, and trauma, you make them resentful and toxic, and in a way provoke them to continue committing crimes even upon release.
Though open prisons are run by the state, they are set-up as rehabilitative community spaces, where people stay in houses, many with their families and children. Open prisons provide an alternative to the traditional prison system with minimal security, allowing prisoners to work, build skills, and maintain social ties with the outside world.
While prisoners at the open prison in Cherlapally, Hyderabad are paid to tend crops, fish, and raise chickens, prisoners at the open prison in Anantapur, in Andhra Pradesh have cultivated medicinal herbs for a drug company.
Care, however, must be taken that reformation of prisoners is not used as an excuse for corporate opportunism.
Sanganer offers the best version of the open prison, by providing significant freedom to its prisoners to engage in their employment of choice.
Incidental Convicts
Unusually, in India, women prisoners are allowed to raise their children till six years of age in prison. However, most state-specific prison manuals lack specific provisions for children of prisoners.
Consequentially, children are not only deprived of sufficient nutrition, space, education, and health care facilities, but are also subject to an unhygienic, surveilled, and violent environment, during their formative years, which impacts their future, and leaves them with inter-generational trauma.
In allowing children to stay with only their mother in prison, the law perpetuates gendered norms of caregiving, and relieves the father from all child-rearing responsibilities.
After children complete six years, they are promptly separated from their mothers, without receiving support that prepares them for this transition. According to NCRB 2021 data, there are 1,867 children who stay with their mothers in prisons across India. Even if children do not accompany their mothers to prison, they develop separation anxiety, and stunted emotional development.
In contrast, open prisons do not compel families to separate ties, and instead allow for prisoners to live with their partner and raise their children together, in a more typical environment, where the child may not even be aware that their parent is incarcerated. However, there are only four open prisons for women prisoners in India.
Additionally Assam’s (Supplementary Provisions) Rules on the Superintendence and Management of Jails, 1968 continue to deny women prisoners the opportunity to be transferred to open prisons.
All states must therefore allow prisoners of all gender identities a chance to transfer to open prisons, along with their families. This would also ensure that transgender people, who often experience re-traumatisation because of the binary of prison classification, would be able to thrive better.
Other Stakeholders
Open prisons not only benefit prisoners, but all participants in the ecosystem. Survivors of crimes are also better placed to receive closure and recover from the harm, knowing that the perpetrator of the crime inflicted on them has transformed and is now meaningfully contributing to society. It also benefits taxpayers, as the operating costs of open prisons are only a fraction of those in closed prisons.
In closed prisons, prison officials face a challenging environment, with overcrowding, minimal additional training and sensitisation, dismal wages, and no mental health support to help them cope with the monotony and violence of their job. Open prisons provide the opportunity for prison officials to wield their authority towards the betterment of inmates as facilitators of change.
Way Forward
Open prisons offer prisoners a sense of purpose, and a second chance at life. By reducing the stigma attached to prisoners, they create pathways for them to meaningfully re-enter society, gain employment, and access public services.
They have been successfully employed in countries with progressive regimes such as Finland and Denmark, and India should aim to follow their example and perfect its open prison model.
Additionally, inmates in open prisons should be provided with customised tools and resources to reform and become their best selves.
The eligibility criteria for open prisons should be made unfirm across states, as suggested by Supreme Court judge Justice Pankaj Mithal (when he was the Chief Justice of Rajasthan High Court) and expanded to encapsulate a larger population, with equal opportunities being given to men, women, and transgenders prisoners.
The high-profile delegation of Supreme Court and Rajasthan High Court judges that visited the Sanganer Open Prison is especially important, as it shines a light on a workable alternative to overcrowded prisons, which can be perfected. All citizens should encourage their governments to spend their money on more effective, reformative and kinder solutions to addressing crime.
(Stuti Shah is a Doctoral Candidate at Columbia Law School. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author's own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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