Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners

Prisoners mean those who suffer imprisonment in a jail or those who stay in a jail as remanded prisoners. When I was doing my M.A.in criminology and forensic science in the University of Saugar,Sagar(as the University was then known: during 1973-1975 ;now the University is called Hari Singh Gour Viswavidhyala,Sagar,Madhya Pradesh),I heard for the first time about Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. I was indeed happy to hear it because the prisons were then HELLS (even today, they are hells) where no rules were strictly followed. The condemned human souls behind the bars have Standard Minimum Rules for their treatment. I read the Rules with enthusiasm and I could not, but appreciate them heartily. During 2011 when I read the Rules, I feel desperate to see that the United Nations do not think of amending the Rules to suit to the needs of the hour.

The Standard Minimum Rules For The Treatment of Prisoners was adopted by the United Nations on August 30, 1955 by the First United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders. At that time, the Science of Correction (earlier, it was called Penology) was not a developed branch in criminology. Precisely therefore, the use of the expression 'PRISONERS' was alright and justified .The objectives of punishment have travelled a long way from 'RETRIBUTION' (lex talionis),to Correction,Reformation,Rehabilitation,Resocialization,Reorientation and Reintegration to society back of the crime-doers. The explanation for the causes of crime too have travelled a longer way from demonology to multiple causation approach including the role of victims in the causation of crime.

About 60 years ago or around 1955,a prisoner was a hated person and was avoided by many in society. In my childhood, a prisoner was like a man who suffered the most loathsome contagious disease and all ran away from him as they were afraid of the deadly communicable disease. Students from schools then went to Central Prisons to see from a distance the convicted offenders and during their picnics, they visited the Gallows in the Jails as items of curiosity and the prisoners as souls who were caged just like animals in the zoo. They were afraid of the prisoners and the teachers as well as the jail authorities never allowed their pupils to talk to' the caged human lives' thrown to the prisons. They were considered to be subhuman or abnormal people who needed treatment. A prisoner, whether he was a convicted one or a remanded one, he was a "PRISONER AFTERALL' and the people then and even now think so, because a world organization like the UNO use such an expression to the convicted or the remanded to the jails. The question here is:" Should we still retain the word PRISONERS in the Standard Minimum Rules?" The expression 'PRISONER' has a social stigma which has a negative impact upon the correction etc.,of the inmates in a correctional institution and the United Nations ought to initiate steps to wipe off that stigma from the human minds. The discussions that follow next will be about a change in that area.