Arun Kumar (name changed) is a software engineer by qualification. But, he was sent to arrested and sent to prison, after being named in a feud in his village. Although having worked on software development in the US, Kumar was now being forced to take up farm labour jobs in the jail at Charlapally, on the outskirts of Hyderabad. The Charlapally jail, happens to be one of the biggest jails in Andhra Pradesh for housing the convicts.
However, Kumar’s professional skills will now not go to waste. The jail is shortly going to have a data processing facility with 60-70 computers. “We want to use people like him to put their skills to best use. Yes, he might have done something wrong and the judiciary found him guilty. But, what is wrong in making use of his skill sets rather than making him handle farm labour jobs?” C N Gopinath Reddy, director general of prisons in Andhra Pradesh, said while talking to DNA. He was talking about the first-of-its-kind proposal to set up an IT-enabled services facility on a jail premises.
The pilot project being taken up by the prisons department along with the Bangalore-based Radiant Info Systems will go on stream in the next three to four months. The skilled and academically qualified convicts serving their jail terms will be selected to handle the projects that are brought into the centre by Radiant. The computers that are used at the center will not be connected to the
internet since the rule book does not allow such networking.
“It is going to be a simple data entry, data processing and data transmission jobs that they (convicts) will handle. We are planning to pay up to Rs4,500 per month to each of the convicts selected for the job,” Reddy explained.
Though waiting for some of the final approvals from the government, the facility is expected to provide employment to about 250 qualified convicts. There are about 2,000 inmates in the jail and many of them have reasonable academic records, some of them having pursued their education while serving their jail terms.
Once successful at Charlapally, more ITeS facilities are expected to come up in other major jails in Andhra Pradesh. “We have six major jails in the state and there are about 8,000 convicts lodged in these prisons. But, before expanding it to other jails, we want to evaluate the model and ensure that there are no loose ends,” he explained. But, why should a jail have such a facility in the first place? “A jail is not just for executing the punishment. It is also a facility to correct people. By making them face the punishment alone, we are not bringing about any reform in the person,” Reddy said.
