A prison without walls

The only strictures are a night curfew, roll calls at dawn and dusk to check attendance and a lone guard to ward off intruders at night.

Nobody has ever attempted to escape.

The convicts wear normal clothes, live in small houses on the 10-acre campus and work in the city. Some run flourishing businesses while the unskilled work as daily labourers.

There are several serious taxpayers, and those who have made good own cars, tractors, mobile telephones, televisions and refrigerators 8212; luxuries by Indian standards.

Not everyone, however, gets sent there.

8220;We have a strict screening system,8221; said Arun Dugar, head of prisons in the desert state of Rajasthan, where Sanganer islocated.

8220;Serial murderers and rapists, people who have committed crimes against the state, drug smugglers and professional assassins are out.8221;

8220;All the inmates are required to have served at least a third of their sentences, including remission, in an ordinary jail. If their conduct is satisfactory, if they were productive8230; they are considered for a transfer.8221;

Jagdish Prasad Sharma is the head of a seven-member body elected by the prisoners to serve as their representatives. The life-termer says his new job is like his old one.

8220;I was a village chieftain before I came to jail. This job is like that. This place is not a prison, it is like a village or like a large family.8221;

Sharma, who runs a lucrative transport business from the prison, says the manager of the local bank was stunned when he approached the official for a loan three years ago to start a business.

8220;In my application, I put my address as Sanganer Jail. The manager did not believe me when I said I was a convict. He said: 8220;Youcan8217;t be walking around like this.8221; I told him to visit the prison and see things for himself.

8220;He came the next day and said he was very impressed. He sanctioned the loan. After that, several of our people have got loans from his bank.8221;

Prison chief Dugar said 60 per cent of the 129 houses in the complex were built by the inmates at their own expense.

8220;We do nothing8230; they fend for themselves, earn their living and revert to an ordinary life. You could call it a halfway home where one re-learns how to get back to society.8221;

Ratan Kanwar and her husband Mohar Singh, both convicted for murder shortly after their marriage 13 years ago, started living together for the first time roughly a year ago when they were transferred to Sanganer from two separate high-security prisons.

8220;It is 95 per cent better than a jail. It is almost like our village,8221; Kanwar said, cradling her first child, a three-month-old son who was born in prison.

But for inmate Amar Chand Moyal, a former Army soldier whocurrently works as a typist at the court in Sanganer, the stigma of prison remains.

8220;A cage is a cage, even if it is gilded,8221; he said. 8220;The brand of a prisoner is tattooed on me and my family. I tried to get my daughters married off but everyone backed out when they came to know who I was.8221;

Kiran Bedi, a former Chief of India8217;s best-known prison who won the prestigious Magsaysay award for her jail reforms, said although Sanganer was a model jail, it could not be widely replicated.

8220;Such jails need lots of open spaces and there is a land shortage in cities. Moreover, you can only open such jails to people who have committed mistakes in the heat of the moment, not to habitual offenders.8221;

Bedi called for reforms in India8217;s 8220;overcrowded, ordinary jails,8221; adding: 8220;In Copenhagen, ordinary prisoners are allowed to go into the city for education. We should be looking at things like that.8221;