This is the second part of the three-part series on ‘safeguarding prisoners’ rights in India‘ as a part of the Justicemakers’ Writer’s Training Program, run in partnership with Agami and Ashoka’s Law For All Initiative. The first and third part can be found here and here.
The Cost Of Imprisonment
Shaji,* 52, was released from Viyyur jail, Thrissur, in 2013 after being acquitted of murder. During our telephonic interview, I inquired about his life post-release. Engaged as a manual labourer, Shaji struggled to repay the huge loans he had taken out to support his wife, mother and two daughters.
As a probationer under the Kerala government’s social defence scheme for released convicts, Shaji received ten thousand rupees to buy two cows. However, he soon sold them to pay his lawyer’s pending fees. When asked about the additional support he is eligible to receive from the government, he said, “they (probation officers) came once. I have had no contact with them since. They just gave me the money and left. I am lucky that way; many others in my position did not even get that.”
Research in prisons worldwide reveals how imprisonment results in dramatic physical and cognitive deterioration — hardening inmates emotionally and making them distrustful of changing environments.
Ex-convicts who have served long sentences are especially vulnerable since they are suddenly released from prison conditions that are radically different from the real world. These individuals no longer possess the physical, financial, and psychological resources needed to adapt to their everyday surroundings.
Many inmates struggle to secure access to adequate housing, healthcare, employment, and social support. Today, rehabilitation of prisoners is considered a valuable goal of punishment to be pursued by all criminal justice systems.
Rehabilitation is essential not only to improve the lives of prisoners in a material sense but also to support their reintegration into society — helping them lead a dignified life, free from discrimination and judgment, while simultaneously preventing reoffending in the long run.
A Dismal State of Affairs
While most prison and social justice departments boast of various rehabilitation programs for such inmates, there are no regular updates concerning their implementation. During my fieldwork in Thrissur, several prisoners spoke about how most programs were far too simplistic and erroneously focussed on short-term gains as opposed to prisoners’ long-term welfare.
From single lumpsum distributions of money, sewing machines, or cattle to long-drawn procedural formalities seeking access to food, employment and education — most ‘benefits’ offered either did not suit their needs or supported them for only a few months. Not all prisoners needed small-scale income generation activities. Some wished to join de-addiction programs, while others required mentors and mental health support networks to offer them guidance on reconnecting with their families and communities.
Instead, many prisoners I interviewed complained of being neglected by probation officers who, instead of assisting them, rarely kept track of their needs and made single visits, after which they never heard back.
Reports from other parts of the country shed light on similar superficial initiatives that do not meaningfully support released prisoners.
In Tamil Nadu, many prisoners expended family resources to visit community centres to submit financial aid applications but were repeatedly turned down by authorities who rarely considered their needs important. An independent study in Delhi’s Tihar jail showed that only 1.27% of prisoners who had served at least 15-year sentences and were released between 2018-2020 received rehabilitation grants from the government.
Speaking of the situation for ex-convicts in Karnataka, retired IPS officer ST Ramesh observed how released prisoners are ‘doubly marginalized’ as they endure immense societal stigma with insufficient departmental action taken to meet their needs. Today, forty-year-old manuals still regulate the rehabilitation process and offer little guidance to authorities on implementing after release programs. New initiatives are regularly announced in the media, but with little data on how far they have achieved their goals.
In reality, superintendents in-charge of implementing these programs rarely do their job, and departments lack the preparation, training, and groundwork needed to actualize these programs. For instance, prisoners suffering from drug abuse in Palayamkottai Central Jail could not secure help since authorities faced hurdles in collecting data on the number of prisoners requiring assistance and the nature of the care they needed.
Similarly, the Maharashtra prison department recently increased its budget to provide released convicts self-employment opportunities. However, the scheme requires prisoners to submit business proposals for their work, which is not feasible for uneducated prisoners (a majority) and those who are still re-adjusting to the starkly different circumstances outside prison.
Further, many of these programs are only offered to some inmates based on narrow criteria such as economic backwardness, physical capabilities, gender, nature of the sentence, and relationships with prison staff.
As a result, many inmates do not wish to participate in rehabilitation programs based on arbitrary selection procedures that are unsupervised. While evaluating facilities for rehabilitation, most prisons cite the existence of ‘skill-enhancing programs’ or ‘vocational training programs’ meant to rehabilitate prisoners slated for release. In practice, inmates are forced to engage in tasks like incense stick making, plumbing, carpentry, footwear and mask production, or working in fuel stations — jobs that neither provide prisoners with relevant skillsets nor employment prospects of their choosing.
In the name of rehabilitation, prisoners are not only paid abysmally low wages for such work but conveniently become a source of cheap labour for prison authorities. Due to the ineffectiveness of most initiatives, released detainees end up working in unskilled or hazardous jobs with precarious monetary conditions that hinder their long-term prospects of leading fulfilling lives.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
To make matters worse, authorities frequently victimize released prisoners by using the ‘convict’ tag to implicate them in false cases, harass their families, deny them public employment, and instil fear in their everyday lives. In 2012, the Chief Minister of Bihar was quoted saying, “before committing a crime, a person now needs to keep in mind that not only would he be punished but would also face other consequences later on and be deprived of various facilities.”
That same year, the state government introduced a scheme that explicitly barred convicted persons from accessing facilities like ration cards, contract work, passports, government jobs, loans, and work in petrol pumps. With such discriminatory attitudes widely prevalent, it is not shocking that inmates in different states have been abused, tortured and even killed by their ‘caretakers’ responsible for improving their wellbeing.
As highlighted in a recent report on the experiences of death row prisoners, upon release, it is almost as if most ex-convicts “drop out of our collective imagination, like they never existed.” The only thing that endures is the stigma attached to long-term imprisonment, especially towards prisoners convicted of violent crimes.
“I am an ex-convict. I cannot expect much out of life in this system…I am just trying to live on a day-to-day basis. Hopefully, someday with God’s blessings, I can support my family,” says Shaji. Like Shaji, hundreds of ex-convicts in India attempt to rebuild their lives post-release, but their efforts go unnoticed by existing rehabilitation programs. This has to change.
*Name changed to protect identity.