PRISON DIARIES

Hello dears. My friends are asking me about my experience heading Prisons Department in Kerala. Whether I am happy working here, and what new changes I have brought in the department and the like. If I give a full account, it will run into a thesis paper. So, I am splitting it into parts for ease of reading.

Let me start at the beginning.

The Beginning

              Recently I read a book in which a strange idea was mooted. We should have islands to send convicted criminals to. All murderers should be sent to one island where they can murder each other, all rapists to another island for doing rape to each other, all thieves to yet another island, let them steal among themselves! I laughed a lot reading it, yet history is replete with instances such as these. Australia was a place where the British Empire sent its criminals away! That way, we could have saved a lot of money which we now spent for infrastructure, security, salary to prison officers and staff as well as education, correction and rehabilitation of inmates, not to mention their food, clothing and medicine.

There is a common misconception among the public that Prisons & Correctional Service is a branch under the Police Department and that the officers working at prisons are police officers. It was created as a wing separate from the police department under the Home Ministry because the roles of police and prison officers are so different from each other. As a police officer, one of my duties for the 31 years in the police department had been to detect crime cases, arrest the criminals with clinching evidence against him/her/them and present the evidence before the concerned courts to ensure a just punishment. I never bothered about the situation or circumstances of the criminal, the social issues he must have had, the traps which he might have fallen into or his hunger or financial crunch. It never bothered me too if he rotted in prisons or not. He committed a crime, let him suffer- was my mentality like everyone else. Off and on in our lives, we get some sparks from somewhere. Hey and presto, one such spark, a wish to get posted in the prison department which only God knows sprouted from where, got granted and here I am, now with over 20 months of experience as Director General, Prisons & Correctional Services Kerala. And each day, I feel as if it is not just a career or duty that I am doing, it’s a great social service and charity too!

Traditionally, prisons are abhorrent, abominable places. Dark, damp, despondent. No one would like to even spend a day there, let alone a life time. Yet, thousands of people are sentenced to spend their life time within the bars of prisons in our country. Because they committed crimes most heinous. Because they are a threat to the society and should be kept away from peace loving people. Because it is a punishment. There was a time when incarceration was the least of the problems for a convict. The physical and mental torture that break him to his last bones ensures that he will never ever have a normal life. Within a month of my taking charge as head of prisons in Kerala in January 2017, I received two complaints, one relating to a sub jail in the south and the other to a district jail in the central Kerala.

A single mother, a professor in a reputed college was in tears when she explained that her only son, an engineering student was arrested for possession of a few grams of cannabis and he was stripped naked and beaten up black and blue at the prison. The boy who got bail in two days slashed his wrist with a razor out of utter desolation and shame. She rushed him to a hospital and saved his life, but he keeps murmuring that he will kill himself. She wanted me to punish the men who resorted to this third degree method on her son. Sad part is that, the boy could not recognize who beat him, once he was taken to the jail. He kept shaking as if in fits and refused to raise his head. The mental trauma was too much for him! I took action against those who were on duty during the day he was beaten up and also issued a direction to stop this practice of stripping and beating those who step inside the prison gates. In Malayalam, the name used to refer to this is ‘nadayadi’, meaning beating at the gate. The Superintendent of this prison tried to justify this saying, “We do it so that the criminals will not repeat such offenses in future!” Shocked at this attitude, I shouted at him but later realized that everyone in the department was of the same mentality.

The second instance was when a woman called me over phone to say that the officer on duty at the prison gate where her son was remanded to judicial custody took her gold necklace as bribe since she was not carrying much money with her for not beating up the boy. She asked, “He took even my thali (mangalyasutra) Madam. Will you ask him to at least return my thali?” Another shock to me. So these people resort to beating up for money. So that they can demand huge amounts to spare the rod! I placed that officer under suspension and initiated disciplinary action. But how many can you suspend? We need officers to manage the prisons.

We spend money to give correctional training to the inmates, but actually, training should be given to prison officers teaching them human rights and ethics. Train them how not to break a man to smithereens inside out. I thought that in my state things would be better than this. As ADGP in Vigilance, I had observed that among the government departments, the least number of complaints and allegations were from prison department. In some years not even a single complaint relating to prisons comes. I was happy to assume charge in a department which got its sur-name ‘Correctional Services’ and remember thinking with a chuckle that I am happy it is not ‘corruption’ al services! I have to admit that only a handful of prison officers are bad. Most of them are very hard-working, dedicated and sincere officers. I pity most of them too because they so constantly interact with negativity which can sometimes affect our own minds.

The first thing I noticed when I visited a prison under me was the smell. I have a sensitive nose. That smell is distinct to prison cells alone. This smell is there in the open prisons and the cleaner women’s prisons too. It’s not the smell of 15 sweaty men huddled up in a cell room or that they have to share a toilet, it is not even because of unwashed cloths or old bedding, but it is the smell of despondency. Lack of freedom scares a person; it is the biggest bane of a human being. Even if it’s a golden cage, a bird hates to be caged. Similarly whatever facilities we give the prisoners, the fact that they are put inside a cell and a lock is firmly put on its door scares them. Despite the presence of others, they do not sleep well. Thoughts of despair hound them. Even normal people become mental wrecks within a week of incarceration. It is in addition to this that they get beaten up too. Violence inside the prison against each other also is the result of this despondency. Cliques are formed, a leader gets elected and they try to create a microcosmic goonda-land inside prisons just for some vague satisfaction of identity. It is quite bad.

What can I do? Stalwarts have worked as Prison Heads before me. Still, sometimes the conditions are so bad that even they would have been helpless, I thought. But something has to be done. At the central prison in Trivandrum, one inmate said, “Madam, can you do something? We admit we are criminals. We are here for offenses dome by us. But the moment we get out after our sentence is served; a police jeep will be waiting for us outside the prison gates. It will pick us up and we’ll be taken straight to the police station. They then interrogate us and arrest us again for offenses not committed by us, because once we did similar crimes and we come back here again. We would hardly know about those cases which police charge us with. Most of the times, we do not get any chance to explain or even speak.  For the police, a few more cases got solved. Can you stop this?” I remember getting a bad taste in my mouth. How do the police know the release date of such convicts unless the prison officers tell them?

“Madam, every day we get calls from the local police stations asking us details of convicts getting released that day,” came the reply.  “Don’t tell them.” I instructed. “If we don’t, then they will not come to take prisoners to courts or hospitals.” Another weak explanation. While it is the duty of police officers to escort prisoners to courts and hospitals as her the Prison Act, the Act or Rules does not mention that it is the prison officer’s duty to inform the police station regarding prisoner’s release dates. I immediately issued orders prohibiting prison officers to divulge unnecessary information to anyone unless they ask for it in writing and the head of department approves the sharing of information. A prison sentence should not make a person live with a lifelong stigma or the tag that he is a habitual modus operandi criminal even after his release. Not after we take so much effort to correct him and educate him with vocational skills so that he will never indulge in crime again in the society. Still things needed to change so much!