Telangana jails to be a model for prisons across the country

Best practices of Prisons Department to be published by Bureau of Police R&D

The Bureau of Police Research and Development will publish a booklet on the best practices of Prisons Department in Telangana, as a model for implementation in prisons across the country.

Stating this at a press meet here on Monday, Vinoy Kumar Singh, Director General of Prisons and Correctional Services said, they will soon send a detailed note on the activities of the department to BPR&D to facilitate its publications.

Beggars in focus

He said the Department is more focused on rehabilitation of beggars in the city and so far over a 1,000 men and about 450 women, who were lodged in Anand Ashram, were released recently on a personal undertaking that they will not resort to begging again. “As on today, 252 male and 105 female beggars are lodged in Anand Ashram,” he said.

He added that the number of persons lodged in jails across the State in 2017 was 68,369 and that it had declined as compared to previous years.

“Currently 5,474 prisoners are lodged in different jails in the State, out of which 1,861 persons are convicts, 3,087 are undertrials, 128 are detenues and 398 are women prisoners,” he said, adding that the jails in the State can accommodate 6,848 persons.

However, a senior prisons official said that people lodged in the State jails increased in 2017 in comparison to previous year.

“As many as 62,608 persons, both convicts and undertrials, were lodged in jails in 2016. That number has increased to 68,369 in 2017,” he said, requesting anonymity.

Self-sufficiency

According to Mr. Singh, the Department is marching towards self-sufficiency and in the last year, the revenue generated through various initiatives taken by the Department has increased to 100% as opposed to the previous year. “We earned almost ₹12 crore profit last year, while only ₹7 crore was generated in 2016,” he said.

The DG said corruption was completely eradicated in the jails and they have set up a third party call centre to get feedback from released prisoners. He also mentioned that under the Vidyadanam programme, launched in 2014, 32,514 prisoners have been educated.