The state prisons department is set to give prisoners who are in pursuit of an education a leg up by roping in sector experts to address their academic issues.
Undertrials as well as convicts at the Nagpur central jail who have enrolled for various distance education courses with the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) will have their queries addressed by academicians via video conferencing for the first time in India.
On January 8, a phone-in radio counselling facility was launched for inmates who are studying with IGNOU, making it the first correctional facility to get a virtual classroom.
The prisons department is now planning to extend this to cover video conferencing.
"At present, around 1,000 of our 2,500 prisoners are studying various undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Two have even registered for MBA degrees. This high concentration of students has made it the first jail to get the phone-in counselling facility," said Yogesh Desai, Deputy Inspector General, Prisons (Eastern Region).
At present, these inmates will be able to submit their queries about the curriculum to the jail staff, who will read them out once a week to IGNOU's staff.
These queries will be replied to on the university's Gyan Vani educational FM radio channel. There are plans to make it a daily class.
"We are planning to enable two-way communication between the inmates and academicians using the video conferencing facilities set up in the prison. These are otherwise used for the courtroom appearances of these prisoners. The same software can be used here," explained Desai.
He added that otherwise, with restrictions that left them with little contact with the outside world, prisoners had no avenue to get their academic queries addressed.
"Convicts must also be rehabilitated once they are released and this is not possible without education," said Desai.
Maharashtra has 54 prisons including nine central jails, 19 class-I district prisons, 23 class-II district prisons and three class-III district jails in addition to 172 sub-jails. This also includes 13 open prisons including two for women, one special prison at Ratnagiri, one women prison at Byculla, one open colony at Atpadi in Sangli, and one Borstal school at Nashik.
PRISONS IN STATE
Maharashtra has 54 prisons including nine central jails, 19 class-I district prisons and 23 class-II district prisons.
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 "Inmates of the Nagpur central jail during a study session")
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