Court suggests semi-open prisons

Jun 12, 2011 |

Age Corespondent

New Delhi

Convicts lodged in jail could soon work as normal office-goers from 10 am to 5 pm, spend time with their family members and again come back to their cell to serve the sentence, with a city court suggesting the Delhi

government to consider such a model prisoner reformative system to de-congest jails and adopt a lenient view towards convicts who do not exhibit violent tendency.
Taking cue from a successful model of Himachal Pradesh’s Bilaspur jail where even murder convicts are permitted to re-integrate with the society, additional sessions judge Kamini Lau said, “I am hopeful that the issue (of open jails) being high on the government agenda, the available options would be considered by NCT of Delhi at the earliest so as to enable the courts to explore alternatives of suspended/deferred/limited imprisonment/incarceration and of imprisonment in open prisons/correctional institutions in appropriate cases.”
During the pendency of the trial, Ajay Chagti, additional secretary (home) and Sunil Gupta, law officer-cum-PRO of Delhi prisons, had apprised the court that the proposal of semi-open prisons has already been sent to the city government for approval.
The court said the Delhi government could adopt this model in a modified manner.
The court’s suggestion came after it pronounced its jail sentence to four youth convicted for inflicting injuries on their neighbours at Uttam Nagar area in 2006. The court was informed that there are 32 open prisons existing all over the country.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/79134" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-afaaf2509564429bf998b0f050987338" value="form-afaaf2509564429bf998b0f050987338" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="88499873" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>