NEW DELHI: In a bid to transform India’s punitive prison system into rehabilitation centres, the Supreme Court has ordered sweeping reforms and ruled that women prisoners have the same fundamental rights as male prisoners to be housed in Open Correctional Institutions (OCIs), which must change the nature of labor camps and convert them into vocational training centers and allow regular reunion of prisoners with their families.Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta wrote a 138-page tome on former judges who blamed them for the ills of India’s prison system and formulated a judicial antidote. SC Justice SR Bhat, who chairs the high-level committee, will be given a monthly honorarium of Rs 10 lakh along with other facilities to formulate common minimum standards across the country for “Reforms and Governance of Open Correctional Institutions” within six months. It requires states that do not have open prisons to establish these institutions and mandates a multi-tiered monitoring system to ensure that its set of instructions are strictly followed within a stipulated time. It has scheduled the next hearing on the matter for September 1. It directs the state committees to submit quarterly reports on the implementation of open prison reforms directed by the SC to the jurisdictional HCs, who in turn will submit annual reports to the SC on March 31 every year.Writing the judgement, Justice Mehta said, “Exclusion of women from OCI, or failure to transfer women from closed prisons to OCI despite being eligible, constitutes blatant sex discrimination in violation of Articles 14 and 15(1) of the Constitution and also violates their right to live with dignity guaranteed under Article 21.”He said: “Denying access to OCI denies female prisoners equal opportunity for rehabilitation and cannot be sustained within a constitutional order committed to equality, dignity and the promise of just change. Therefore, immediate and effective corrective measures must be taken in this regard.”The judges were dissatisfied with the long wait times – ranging from 4 to 21 years in different states – for people held in closed prisons to be eligible for transfer to open prisons.
