PUNISHMENT VERSUS REHABILITATION: A CRIMINOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF PRISON ADMINISTRATION AND PRISONER RE-INTEGRATION IN INDIA

Indian criminal justice has, on paper, chosen reformation over retribution. The Supreme Court has said so repeatedly, from the late 1970s onward, and Parliament has begun to say so as well. Yet anyone who works in or around a district jail knows that the choice made in the judgments has not been fully made in the barracks. This paper looks at the distance between the two. It sets out the theoretical contest between punishment and rehabilitation, traces the constitutional and statutory framework governing prisons, reads the leading and recent decisions of the Supreme Court on prisoners’ rights and release, and then examines the administrative realities of overcrowding, undertrial detention, staffing, discrimination and weak after-care. The paper argues that the doctrine is largely settled and the implementation is not, and closes with practical recommendations drawn from the perspective of a practising advocate. Keywords: prison reform; reformative theory; Article 21; remission; parole; undertrial prisoners; reintegration; Sukanya Shantha.