At a time when the prisoners across India and several parts of the world are facing serious issues of human rights, space crunch and shoddy treatment by jail authorities, the United Nations has come up with a new set of rules for the treatment of prisoners. These rules will be known as “the Mandela Rules”, to honour the legacy of South African leader Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison in the course of his struggle for human rights, equality and democracy.
The ‘Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners’ was approved by the UN last week. Besides, the UN has also decided to extend the scope of Nelson Mandela International Day, observed each year on July18, to be also known as Mandela Prisoner Rights Day, in order to promote humane conditions of imprisonment, to raise awareness about prisoners being a continuous part of society and to value the work of prison staff as a social service.
The rules said that un-convicted prisoners are presumed to be innocent, hence, they shall be treated as such. Untried prisoners have been kept separately from convicts and they should be allowed to wear own clothing. If they chose to wear prison dress, it shall be different from convicted prisoners. The rules also said that an untried prisoner shall always be offered the opportunity to work, but cannot not be required or compelled to work. And in case he or she chooses to work, there should be proper remuneration to it.
Rules said persons who are found to be not criminally responsible, or who are later diagnosed with severe mental disabilities or health conditions, and for whom staying in prison would mean an exacerbation of their condition, shall not be detained in prisons. They should be transferred to mental health facilities. The UN wants special attention to be paid to encourage prisoners to establish relations with persons or agencies outside the prison which can help his/her rehabilitation.
The new UN rules added that prisoners, particularly undertrials or un-convicted, too have a right to live with dignity. Hence, when prisoners are being removed to or from an institution, there should be minimum exposure to public, and proper safeguards should be placed to protect them from insult, curiosity and publicity in any form.
There should not be overcrowding in jails. Persons imprisoned for debt and other civil prisoners have to be kept separate from persons imprisoned for criminal offences.
The new set of rules come at a time when the Indian prisons are facing space crunch due to high number of undertrials and convicts lodged in jails. According to the latest Prison Statistics of India the occupancy rate in Indian jails are 117 per cent higher than capacity. This means where the capacity is for 3.5 lakh inmates in total 1,387 jails in India there are 4.18 lakh persons lodged in them. Worst is that of the total inmates, 67.6 per cent (2.82 lakh) are undertrials.
Interestingly, 390 women convicts with their 457 children and 1,172 women undertrials with their 1,320 children were lodged in various prisons in the country by 2014. A total of 5,394 had mental illness out of 4,18,536 inmates, accounting for 1.3 per cent of total.