With focus on rehabilitation, Centre prepares new prisons Act to replace pre-independence law

In a statement, the ministry said the old pre-Independence act focuses on keeping criminals in custody and enforcement of discipline and order in prisons. There is no provision for reform and rehabilitation of prisoners.

It said the new Act attempts to change this through a number of steps: Creating provisions for grant of parole, furlough and remission to prisoners to encourage good conduct; providing special provisions to women and transgender inmates; ensuring physical and mental well-being of prisoners; and focusing on the reformation and rehabilitation of inmates.

Last year, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, while announcing that a change in the prison law was in the works, had called for a rehabilitative view of prisoners and jails, saying India’s incarceration system is prone to abuse because it was set up by the British to subjugate political prisoners.

The model Act also has provisions for the following: Security assessment and segregation of prisoners; individual sentence planning; grievance redressal; prison development board; use of technology in prison administration; protecting society from criminal activities of hardened criminals and habitual offenders.
“In the last few decades, an altogether new perspective has evolved about prisons and prison inmates, globally. Prisons today are not looked as places of retributive deterrence but are considered as reformative and correctional institutions where the prisoners are transformed and rehabilitated back into society as law abiding citizens,” it said.

“Over the past few years, the MHA noted that there are several lacunae in the existing Prisons Act, which regulates the prison administration in all States and Union territories, with the exception of few States who have enacted a new Prisons Act. Besides the conspicuous omission of the correctional focus in the existing Act, a need was felt to revise and upgrade the Act in tune with modern day needs and requirements of prison management,” it said.
Along with The Prisons Act of 1894, the Prisoners Act of 1900 and the Transfer of Prisoners Act, 1950 have also been reviewed by the MHA and relevant provisions of these Acts have been assimilated in the Model Prisons Act, 2023.