For humane prisons

By R.K. Raghavan

, by Frontline

The traditional neglect of jails is a result of a morally flawed assessment that incarceration is meant solely to be penal rather than reformative.

A prison that deprives prisoners of basic sustenance, including adequate medical care, is incompatible with the concept of human dignity and has no place in civilised society.

– Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, United States Supreme Court in Brown vs Plata (May 2011)

Traditionally, jails are neglected deliberately in most parts of the world, including the developed countries. This attitude derives from a morally flawed assessment that incarceration is meant solely to be penal rather than reformative.

The U.S., which preaches human rights to the rest of the world all the time, is one of the nations hugely delinquent in the matter. It locks up people for alleged crimes much more than any other nation. The current estimate is that it has 2.3 million convicts behind bars. (The corresponding figures for the United Kingdom and India are 85,000 and 380,000.) Some of these people are there for stealing a pair of socks or hand gloves!

A much-discussed recent U.S. Supreme Court decision bares all. My focus in this column is on that judgment, and I am hoping that one of these days our own apex court will come down heavily on governments in India for their indifference to what is happening to people held in jails. Indian jail conditions are no less miserable than those in the U.S., and the token administrative action here and there has helped only slightly.

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