The Trial Of UNITED NATIONS-3

Standard Minimum Rules For the Treatment of Prisoners(Contd. From 2,January,2011)

The existing Standard Minimum Rules for the treatment of Prisoners(1955) has two parts-namely Part-I of the Rules covering the general management of institutions and is applicable to all categories of prisoners, criminal or civil, untried or convicted including prisoners subjected to "security measures" or measures ordered by the judge; Part-II containing Rules applicable only to special categories dealt with in each section. Nevertheless, the Rules under section A applicable to prisoners under sentence, shall be equally applicable to categories of prisoners dealt with in Sections B,C and provided they do not conflict with the Rules governing these categories and are for their benefit.

Prison in Dictionary means "a building for the confinement of persons held while awaiting trial, persons sentenced after conviction, etc." and in my considered view is a place where people convicted for having committed an offence are sent and housed. Persons remanded to judicial custody should never be called a prisoner as he is not so or becomes so. He is detained there for purposes other than correction, reformation, reorientation, rehabilitation, resocialisation and reintegration to society back. He is suspected to have committed an offence and is entitled to get a bail as bail is a right and not a grace. He has no disqualifications legally and usually attached to convicted offenders. Just because he is housed in an the institution where convicted are kept, he should not be called a prisoner. He has every right to stay in a different institution and therefore calling a suspect to be a prisoner is indeed
unjustifiable, immoral and illegal. Similarly how can a person detained in civil cases be called a prisoner? A prisoner is one, as said earlier, who is convicted for having committed an offence and therefore civil prisoner, untried prisoner-both are wrong nomenclature and should be removed. People who are detained in a prison for security purposes should not be called "security prisoners", for they are not prisoners and they cannot become so .If the State has no separate building for housing them, it is none of their faults. The State has a responsibility to construct separate buildings for the purposes of detaining them and calling them prisoners is a human rights violation. "Corrective measures ordered by the judge"-what does it mean? The Penal Codes in all countries prescribe imprisonment as a punishment and not for the correction of the persons punished and kept there. Corrective approaches were introduced not at all by the Penal Codes or the judicial sssystem.The Penal Codes and the judiciary consider imprisonment as a means of punishment whereas the criminologists treat it as a means to an end-the end being correction,reformation,rehabilitation,reorientation etc. and there is a history behind such humanitarian treatment in prisons .Remember that the Penal Codes in any country can never become CORRECTIONAL CODES or CODES OF CORRECTION,REHABILITAION,REFORMATION,RESOCIALISATION,REINTEGARTION.Therefore the proposed amendments for Part I is: "Part I of the Rules covers the general management of the Centres of Personality Development and is applicable to persons who are convicted by a Court of Law for having committed an offence/s".In my view,there should be separate Rules for the so-named Civil,Untried prisoners or prisoners subject to" security measures"etc.(to be continued…)