The UT Administration has launched STD (subscriber toll dialing) facility at Burail Jail here. The facility will be available to jail inmates for five minutes once a week.
The STD facility for inmates was inaugurated by UT Home Secretary Anil Kumar at Burail Jail on Friday. With this, it has become the second jail in the country after Tihar Jail to start such facility for jail inmates.
The STD facility will be made available to only those inmates who will maintain good conduct during their incarceration period. Telephone number of the prisoners will be saved in the system along with their particular and IDs.
Whenever a prisoner will be allowed to call he can make call by applying his thumb on Biometric-ID reader. The system will record all the conversation and will store it for appropriate time for future retrieval.
The process of providing STD facility for jail inmates was initiated on the directions of Punjab and Haryana High Court.
On the occasion, UT Home Secretary said that it is good initiative in the process of reformation and in the fulfillment of Human right of prisoners to communicate with family. He said that it will be very helpful for those whose family has to travel from very distant places to meet their wards.
Balbir Singh Dhol, Additional IG Prisons said that this is the second jail after Tihar to give such facility to its inmates.
Around 800 prisoners are lodged in the Burail jail including many dreaded criminals.
Recently, the Institute of Correctional Administration (ICA) here had signed an MoU with International Centre for Prison Studies (ICPS), U.K. to bring prison reforms and evolve rights-based framework of policy and practice.
Earlier, Burail Jail had become the first jail in the northern region comprising Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir among others, in which the facility of Aadhar cards for prisoners was introduced. Earlier, the facility was introduced for jail inmates in Kolkata and Indore.