Top court forms committee to study, suggest prison reforms

The Supreme Court on Tuesday constituted a Committee headed by a retired Supreme Court judge to suggest reforms in prisons across the country. This will not be a time-bound exercise, but the judge heading the Committee — Justice (Retd) Amitava Roy — will be assisted by Director General of Tihar Prisons and inspector general of Police of the Bureau of Police Research and Development to prepare the reports from time to time.

The order came on a petition based on a letter received by the court that pointed to overcrowding, long stay of undertrial prisoners for want of surety, death in jails, lack of hygiene and health facilities among prison inmates of 1,382 jails. Although the Court appointed an amicus curiae to be informed on the condition of jails, the monitoring of prisons was left to the concerned High Courts and state governments, which failed to effectively implement reforms.

So, a bench of Justices Madan B Lokur, S Abdul Nazeer and Deepak Gupta felt the need of forming a three-member committee to exclusively examine the issue. The bench has now directed the committee to review implementation of the Model Prison Manual 2016 that has guidelines to be followed by states and union territories (UTs). The Committee also has the task cut out to ensure implementation of Parliamentary Standing Committee reports on prison reforms.