Police should lodge adolescent offenders in the 18-21 age group only in Borstal Schools and not in prisons even if they were about to complete 21 years of age within a few months after their conviction, the Madras High Court Bench here has said.
Allowing a petition filed by the father of a 20-year-old murder convict, Justice M.M. Sundresh agreed that the Thottiam police in Tiruchi district were wrong in shifting his son from a Borstal School in Pudukottai (where he was lodged immediately after his conviction) to the Tiruchi Central Prison.
Rejecting an explanation offered by the police that the convict was shifted to the prison as he would be turning 21 on June 24 , the judge directed them to shift the convict back to the Borstal School and accord him all the benefits under the Tamil Nadu Borstal Schools Act, 1925.
Section 8 of the Act states that no convict could be lodged in a Borstal School beyond a period of five years since his detention or after attaining the age of 23 years. The aim of the provision was to insulate young offenders from the pernicious influence of hardened criminals in regular prisons.
In a judgment delivered in February 2008, a Full Bench comprising Justices Prabha Sridevan, N. Paul Vasanthakumar and S. Nagamuthu held that Borstal School inmates should be released after 23 years of age without being shifted to regular prisons to serve the remaining sentence.
The judges pointed out that in 1987, the then Advocate-General and Inspector-General of Police (Prisons) had opposed the government’s move to amend the Act enabling the transfer of borstal school inmates to regular prisons, after they turn 23, to undergo the rest of the sentence imposed on them.
“So, this court’s approach should also be to take that view which would extend the benefit to the adolescent offenders to the maximum extent without doing violation to the Sections of the Act and even if another view was possible, we should reject the narrower one.
“The fresh, impressionable and malleable minds of the adolescent offenders cannot be allowed to harden by their incarceration along with criminals. If there is a hope of reformation and restoration of a young offender by training and education, the State must keep that hope alive,” the Bench had observed.
