Union Minister of State for Home Hansraj Gangram Ahir on Thursday advised jail authorities to adopt Prime Minister Narendra Modi's skill development programme to accelerate prison reforms, and assured to increase the police and prison modernisation budgets on the basis of need."Inmates can be imparted training in vocations like farming, sericulture, beekeeping, fisheries and animal husbandry so that they can be rehabilitated and reintegrated with the society. Prime Minister has emphasized on skill development and modernisation," Ahir said. He was speaking on the inauguration of the 5th National Conference of Heads of Prisons of States and Union Territories on prison reforms here. Giving example of certain prisons in Maharashtra, Ahir said: "There should be residential colonies and open jails for inmates where they can live a normal life with their families while being under a sort of house arrest situation."He also suggested prison authorities to go through Supreme Court guidelines for undertrials to help them in obtaining bail to reduce overcrowding in the jails.
Ahir also assured to increase the budget for the modernisation of Police and Prisons as per need. "A sum of Rs 1,800 crores has been provided in the current budget for police modernisation including prisons," Ahir said.Pointing out the circulation of drugs, gang wars and other such menaces in the prisons, the minister said, "The conduct of prison authorities should be improved in bringing about the reformation of inmates." On the occasion, Director General of Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D), Meeran Borwankar highlighted the overcrowding of prisons as a matter of grave concern impeding the prisons reform process. "There are around five lakh inmates in prisons across the country, of whom a vast majority of them, about 68 per cent are undertrials and as many as 2.4 per cent are women," Borwankar said. Besides overcrowding, almost 35 per cent vacancies in prison staff made it impractical to implement prison reforms, Borwankar said. "All of prison staff is tied down in prison security, administration and court procedures, leaving little or no time for inmates' rehabilitation and reintegration."
She also suggested that the name of prisons should be changed to 'correctional administration' or 'correctional homes' to reflect its changing role from punitive action to a reformatory role. The two-day conference being organised by the BPR&D would provide a platform to the stakeholders, the correctional administrators in states and union territories to exchange ideas and learn from each other's experience.Four such conferences were organised by the BPR&D and Ministry of Home Affairs in 2004, 2008, 2010 and 2013.For the first time, the superintendents of central and district jails were invited. The representatives from leading universities, NGOs, and students of law and criminology departments also attended the conference for the first time.