From retribution to reformation...A visit to the Chanchalguda jail

By Radhika Agarwal (NALSAR)

The thought of a jail immediately conjures up morbid images of dungeons with manacled prisoners behind bars. This is exactly what I had in mind when I set out on a field trip to Chanchalguda with my friend for my Criminal Law project which was a study on women under trials. This entailed a study of female offenders in the ‘Special Prison for women’ located in Chanchalguda in the city of Hyderabad. I had mentally prepared myself to see hardened dangerous-looking, blood-thirsty convicts waiting to practise violence on anybody who came so much as fifty feet near them. The classical school of criminology itself believes that criminals are born with those “criminal-like” features and a propensity to be violent. You can imagine the apprehension then with which my friend and I set foot inside the jail.

Little did we know what was in store for us when we entered...The prison compound was not a very heavily guarded one, as you would expect. None of the guards (all were females) were armed. We were asked to deposit our cell phones with them. Then we were shown inside the office of Mrs. Basheera Begum, who was the Superintendent of the jail. She was a cheerful lady who gave us a warm welcome by offering us tea and biscuits. The sumptuous biscuits, we were told, had been prepared by the prison inmates in the jail’s very own bakery, by the name of ‘Sudhar’ Bakery! Mrs. Basheera Begum then told us about the reformatory programmes that had been undertaken by the jail authorities in order to bring about sudhar or improvement in the condition of the jail inmates. The women were engaged in the activities of making chalk powder, tooth powder and various bakery items like cakes and biscuits. The money which was earned by selling these useful products was distributed among the inmates as their wages. Education was also imparted to them in jail. Quite a few inmates had in fact completed their graduation while in jail, the Superintendent proudly told us.

From providing the women with a steady source of income to organizing cultural programmes for them, the jail authorities had indeed made a sincere effort to rehabilitate the inmates of the prison. As we flipped through the photos displaying the activities of the inmates, we got a pleasant vista of the jail which was quite different from the one which we had in mind earlier. At one of its cultural programmes, a few prison-mates had organized a skit elucidating the ill-effects of dowry in society. I was personally quite impressed with the kind of reformative treatment that was being meted out to the women in jails.

Then we were taken on a round of the jail by Mrs. Basheera Begum herself. We came across a bunch of convicts being talked to by a small group of Christian missionaries. In another part of the jail, we observed a few women washing their clothes and cleaning their rooms. Most of the women and their children however could be seen in the T.V. room, watching T.V. When we entered they all stood up and looked at us in an inquisitive manner. Mrs. Basheera Begum introduced us to some of the women undertrials who were being tried for offences like murder, prostitution and sale of liquor. What was most heart-wrenching was the innocence and fear that we saw in the eyes of these women. It was as if they themselves did not understand why they were being kept there. To even think that these women were capable of committing such crimes seemed unthinkable to me. Some of the convicts and women under trial had their children living with them. Some of these children were born inside the jail!

We were told that children could live with the mother only till the age of six. After that, since they started developing mentally and understanding the environment of the prison, they were removed and placed either in the care of relatives or sent to another home for these children (if there was nobody else to care for them). We were also shown the hospital and special healthcare units which had been made for pregnant women inside the jail.

Since it was Sunday, the Bakery was closed for visitors. Mrs. Basheera Begum invited us to visit again on a week day where we could see the inmates at work and even get a chance to personally interact with them. It was with a light heart and an enlightened mind that we left the jail and made our way back to college.

The visit left us disillusioned about the notion of a jail as a dreary and desolate place for meting out harsh punishment to criminals. The move towards reformation of the system of imprisonment is definitely a much needed and welcome one.