REHABILITATION OF WOMEN PRISONERS IN THE STATE OF U.P: POLICY AND PRACTICE

Abstract

The Model Prison Manual provides rehabilitation and reintegration of prisoners into society as one of the goals of the Indian criminal Justice system. Presently offenders are imprisoned not only for punishment, deterrence and incapacitation but also for rehabilitation and reintegration.  This approach requires prisons to be managed not as a punitive rather as a correctional institute whereby different opportunities like vocational training, educational and employment opportunities, facilities for physical and mental health care are provided to all the prisoners so that they come out of prison as a law-abiding citizen. Rehabilitation is necessary not only fot the prisoners but also for the entire community. Prisons were primarily designed for male prisoners where needs of women prisoners were ignored. Women constitute a small percentage of the entire prison population of India, so their rehabilitation is quite an ignored area of the prison administration. This paper seeks to analyse the opportunities of rehabilitation available to women prisoners in the state of U.P through an empirical study conducted in the four jails of Meerut zone of U.P and make some suggestions to facilitate better rehabilitation of women prisoners in the state of U.P.