Prison reform in India

THE publication in the Press of a series of articles by Mahatma Gandhi under the heading ‘My experiences in jail’ has once more revived public interest in the all-absorbing subject of prison reform. It is a matter of common knowledge that jails in India are “hotbeds of vice and degradation and that the prisoners do not become any the better by living in them, every conceivable crime against morality being not only possible but committed almost with impunity”. Possibly, public apathy towards those shut up behind the jails walls, is, also to some extent, responsible for the rotten system that prevails in Indian jails. “Perhaps all the world over,” writes Mahatmaji, “the gaols are an institution most neglected by the public. The result is that there is little or no public check on their administration. It is only when a political prisoner of some fame finds himself within the walls of a prison that there is any public curiosity about the happenings there.” This neglect on the part of the public in other countries may or may not affect the prisoners’ lot seriously, but in India, where there are no effective means of lifting the veil from the administration of gaols, it has so far only resulted in making them “well- or ill-managed cattle farms”. This does not, of course, in any way lighten the Government’s responsibility in the matter, a responsibility that cannot be more aptly described than by quoting the words of Winston Churchill when he was Home Secretary in 1910. Churchill said:–“The mood and temper of the public with regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of civilisation of a country.”

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