2 months ago
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The Supreme Court connected Thursday (February 26, 2026) directed States and national territories to make a time-bound protocol for filling existing vacancies successful Open Correctional Institutions (OCI) and unfastened barracks.
A Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta, successful a judgment, observed that prisons were institutions of correction, wherever dignity, self-respect and societal reintegration were not aspirational ideals but law necessities.
The tribunal underscored that OCIs did not relation simply arsenic labour camps oregon spaces of custodial convenience.
The tribunal besides directed States and Union Territories to make a protocol for restructuring existing OCIs to allocate capable capableness for pistillate prisoners. The directions came connected a PIL petition regarding overcrowding successful prisons and the functioning of OCIs.
Panel acceptable up
Recognising the lack of uniformity successful governance, eligibility norms, rehabilitation facilities and absorption of OCIs, the apex tribunal constituted a high-powered committee for betterment and governance of OCIs with erstwhile Supreme Court justice Justice S. Ravindra Bhat arsenic enforcement chairperson.
The nonsubjective of the committee is formulation of communal minimum standards for the governance, medication and absorption of OCIs, including eligibility criteria, surviving conditions, etc, the Bench said.
The tribunal said the directions were being issued to guarantee that equality, non-discrimination and the close to unrecorded with dignity, arsenic guaranteed nether Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution, was meaningfully realised successful the medication of prisons crossed the country.
The enduring spot of a law ideology lies not successful the severity of punishments, but successful its committedness to reconstruct dignity, anticipation and accidental adjacent to those who person transgressed the law, the tribunal said.
“Prisoners bash not cease to beryllium bearers of law rights upon incarceration, and the state’s work to dainty them with humanity, fairness and compassion stands heightened wherever liberty is lawfully curtailed,” the Bench said.
