Bhubaneswar: Even though vocational training is considered one of the essential features of correctional programmes in jails, the state Prisons department is showing little interest if data revealed by National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) is any indication.
Various courts and experts have repeatedly stressed upon the fact that prisons should play the role of correctional centres instead of turning into torture chambers. The state governments implement different welfare activities, educational and vocational training programmes in the prisons to make the inmates eligible enough to subsist without resorting to any criminal activities.
Vocational training imparted to prisoners improves self-confidence and self-esteem among them and using the skill set they can earn a dignified livelihood after their release from the jails.
The Bureau of Police Research and Development’s Model Prison Manual’s Rule 14.01 terms the vocational training and work programmes as essential features of the correctional programmes and it should be the duty of every state to ‘have a clear policy for work programmes and vocational training of prisoners.’
However, the annual prison statistics by NCRB revealed that prison authorities in Odisha have shown little interest in vocational training in the jails of the state. The 10-year data revealed a declining number of inmates getting vocational training like carpentry, tailoring, weaving, farming and soap or phenyl making.
As per NCRB data, 481 prisoners out of the total 12,429 received vocational training under various categories in 2010. The number witnessed a continuous rise till 2015 barring a small decline in 2014. As many as 937 prisoners comprising 5.86 per cent of the total 15,965 inmates lodged in 90-odd jails of the state underwent training under various vocations in 2015.
However, the NCRB prison statistics for 2016 revealed a sharp decline as compared to the previous year’s data on trainees. Only 92 prisoners were imparted vocational training in various jails of the state in 2016, as per NCRB data.
What is more shocking is that the prisons authorities failed to impart vocational training to any of the jail inmates in the state during 2017. Similarly, as many as 94 and 101 prisoners underwent training in 2018 and 2019 respectively.
The same was also unearthed by the audit report of prisons in Odisha in 2017. The report remarked, “The authorities had not imparted vocational training in any of the jails of Odisha except in Berhampur circle jail. Only 32 out of 162 convicts were trained in masonry and plumbing during 2015-17.”
The decrease also mirrored in the value of goods produced in the jails during vocational training. The gross value of the goods produced by trainee prisoners during 2015 was Rs 1.25 crore which slipped to just Rs 78 lakh in 2019.
In 2016, the gross value of jail products stood at Rs 1.063 crore which further declined to 0.915 crore and 0.875 during 2017 and 2018 respectively.
Odisha figured in the Top 10 worst-performing states in the country in connection with value of goods from jails during 2019. Meanwhile, the goods produced in various jails of Telangana were valued at Rs 599.89 crore in 2019.
Gyan Ranjan Mohapatra, OP