Dot.com jail in the making

This story I got because of my personal contacts which I had built inside the Bhopal Central Jail administration. They called me to tell me that they have set up computers with internet facilities for the use of the jail inmates. This was the first of its kind in the jails in the country and so I went ahead and visited the jail to know from the inmates on their new hi-tech facility provided to them by the authorities in 2001.

IT would be IT or Dot.com time for the 30,000 odd prisoners in the various jails across the State next year as they get trained to make use of the latest computer technology and the Net. This huge project was initiated by the DG Prisons Shakeel Raza who said that linking the various jails through computers is a better alternative to manual labour dependent and expensive work.
Talking to the Hindustan Times, Raza said that the first phase is to link all the central jails and then later on link the sub jails to them.
The project is costly says Raza and adds that ‘though the Police Head office has shrunk our budget we will go ahead with it.’
Some prisoners who are learning computer operations at the Ass jailer and the jailer’s office within the jail premises say that they are having fun with the computer and have a better opportunity to get a job once they are out of jail without having to pay to learn it.
The jail Superintendent says that even official letter written to higher officers are typed and saved by the jail inmates on computers.

All bio-data’s and old files of the jail inmates are now keyed in and loaded onto the system that would enable anyone around the world to access them.
The cost of the new conference room done up at the jail head quarters has been marginal for the jail department as the total man power came from the jail and only the raw materials had to be bought for them says DG Raza.
The jail department has ambitious ideas of creating a well-stocked CD library so that the CDs are duplicated and used in various presentations made by the state police department and other department within the State.
“The project in very big and we have plans to educate the inmates along with my officers on video conferencing in the near future,” says DG prisons Raza, ‘this will enable all to know each other well and thus reduce the burden of paper work for the officers’. This would also act as a medium for education on various vocations taught in the jail and thus reduce the problem of looking for good teachers, he adds. But there would be checks and balances and filtering too on the use of the computer with internet facilities.

Children of the Prison

Prisons are daunting places even for adult men; they are probably far worse for women prisoners. Manuals that govern the running of prisons do not contain any special provisions for children of women prisoners who constitute a particularly vulnerable category. The women are in prison either as under trials accused of an offence, or as convicts. Unlike other inmates, the children are in jail not for any delinquent behaviour but because their mothers are in jail. Either they are born in jail, or they are too young to stay away from their mothers, or there is no one to look after them in the absence of their mother.
Supreme court of India had reacted on an study done by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, which put forward five grounds as the basis for proper facilities for minors accompanying their mother in Prison.
And the below photo essay which you get to see was done during my visit to the women’s wing at the Parpana Agrahara Central jail in Bangalore in June and August 2007 for, Bangalore Mirror -Tabloid.

Veeraesh who was born inside the jail four years ago along with his friends inside the special Women cell at the Parappana Agrahara Jail.

Women inmates play with their under 6 year old children inside the special Women cell at the Parappana Agrahara Jail. Most of these children will leave their mother at the age of 6 if they have an guardian to take care of them.

Shiva a Child consoles his mother inside the Women cell at the Parappana Agrahara Jail. This image was taken in June 2007 and during my revisit in August 2007, Shiva had left for his home wher he was being taken care by his grandparents.

Illavarasan 2 and a half year old stands in queue to get his food along with other women inmates after he was taken in along with his grandmother inside the special Women cell at the Parappana Agrahara Jail In Bangalore. Illavarasan was beaten by his mother before she got married to another person in Salem. The boy is being taken care of her grandmother who has been arrested under alleged charges of saree theft in the city of Bangalore.

Women inmates play with their under 6 year old children inside the special Women cell at the Parappana Agrahara Jail.
What ever their crime the women committed but the motherly bonding with their children was evident through out my two visits to the women cell at the Parpana Agrahara Jails