MHA to provide financial assistance for prisoners

Subject : Polity

Concept :

Recently, Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has launched a scheme which envisages monetary aid to poor inmates who are unable to afford the penalty or the bail amount.

About the initiative:

In line with one of the announcements of the Union Budget, ‘Support for Poor Prisoners’, the scheme envisages financial support to poor persons.
The scheme will enable underprivileged prisoners, majority of whom belong to socially disadvantaged or marginalised groups with lower education and income levels, to get out of prison.
The technology-driven solutions were aimed and put in place to ensure that benefits reach the poor prisoners; reinforcing the E-prisons platform; strengthening of District Legal Services Authority and sensitisation and capacity building of stakeholders to ensure that quality legal aid is made available to needy poor prisoners.

Need of the initiative:

According to Prison Statistics India 2021, a report published by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Ministry of Home Affairs, between 2016-2021, the number of convicts in jails decreased by 9.5 percent whereas the number of undertrial inmates increased by 45.8 percent.

E- prisons Project

This project aims at computerization of the functioning of prisons in the country. It has been operationalised in all States and Union Territories.
e-Prisons data has been integrated with the Police and Court system under the Inter-operable Criminal Justice System.
ePrisons application suite has been developed by National Informatics Centre (NIC), Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY).

It has 3 components:

e-Prison Management Information System (MIS): It is used at the prisons for their day to day regular activities.
National Prisons Information Portal: It is a citizen centric portal showing statistical data of various prisons in the country.
Kara Bazaar: Portal for showcasing and selling the products manufactured in various prisons of the country by inmates.

Inter-operable Criminal Justice System:

It is a common platform for information exchange and analytics of all the pillars of the criminal justice system comprising Police, Forensics, Prosecution, Courts, Prisons.
Purpose: To reduce errors and time taken in sharing of necessary information between the pillars, which often lead to larger challenges like longer duration of trials, poorer convictions, transit losses of documents etc.
Some other critical benefits arising out of the ICJS ecosystem are usable analytics products like the National Database on Sexual Offenders (NDSO) to identify & track repeat and habitual sexual offenders.

Other Government Interventions:

Modernization of Prisons scheme: The scheme for modernisation of prisons was launched in 2002-03 with the objective of improving the condition of prisons, prisoners and prison personnel.
E-Prisons Project: The E-Prisons project aims to introduce efficiency in prison management through digitization.
Model Prison Manual 2016: The manual provides detailed information about the legal services (including free services) available to prison inmates.
National Legal Services Authority (NALSA ): It was constituted under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 which came into force on 9th November, 1995 to establish a nationwide uniform network for providing free and competent legal services to the weaker sections of the society.