Integrated Prisons Management System

Sunil Kumar Barnwal

1. Goals & Objectives

The main purpose behind the implementation of the Prison Management System (PMS)
was to enhance the administrative capabilities of the jails in terms of monitoring and
security of the prison while improving the efficiency and productivity of the Prisons. The
main goals of the project are enunciated below:
• To ensure proper monitoring of the prisons by the top officials
• To ensure that the discipline and decorum of the jails is maintained by both the
employees and the prisoners
• To ensure compliance with the Jail Manual with respect to the visitors and their
frequency
• To ensure that no impersonation of the prisoners happens by proper validation and
authentication of the prisoner’s identity
• To ensure that assistance could be provided to police stations in real time if the
need arises
• To reduce the costs and the risks associated with the production of the prisoners in
the court
• To improve the productivity and efficiency of the prisons so as to facilitate the
usage of the available work force for sensitive work while leveraging technology
to reduce the mundane workload of the employees
• To ensure the availability of data in digital form for preservation, analysis and
reporting.
The nature of project is such that outcome of project could be quantitatively measured
only for few parameters such as
• Automatic detection of duplication
• Automatic refusal to visitor meeting a prisoner at interval less than prescribed
• Immediate generation of report on categorization of prisoners on basis of their
cases, period of confinement etc.
• Automatic calculation of Remission to be granted to a convict prisoner for good
behavior, discipline etc.
• Reduction in the cost (Saving of resources) of physical production of prisoners in
Courts.

2. Spread of Project service users

• The project serves the following stakeholders:
• prisoners and their family members and visitors through facilitation of visits and
meetings as per the regulations and laws
• Police by ensuring that the rules are followed while prisoners meet their relatives
and to keep a track of the visitors and number of visits
 • Judiciary by eliminating the need for the physical production of prisoners in the
court; the prisoners may be produced electronically through video conferencing.
This also saves time, money and time of police force.

3. Services provided
The project is primarily delivering G2G services with mixture of G2C services. Some of
the key services that are being facilitated are:
• Complete record of prisoner’s individual and family details with health and
educational background
• Complete record of activities performed by prisoner for the purpose of grant of
remission by jail superintendent and Inspector-General as well as for inflicting
punishment for breach of jail discipline.
• Updated record of Correctional program attended by Prisoner
• Record of wages kept in prisoner’s account for work performed in Prison
• Prisoner’s case details, dates of production in different jails
• Biometric features of prisoners
• Prisoner’s history ticket
• Complete record of visitors meeting prisoner
• Automatic refusal of visitor to meet a prisoner having visitor at frequency more
than that provided in Jail Manual
• Web based MIS in offline mode with data being pushed everyday using SWAN.

4. Geographical spread of project implementation

The project is successfully implemented in all the 22 districts of Jharkhand.

5. Project Timelines and milestones

This project has been initiated in January 2007 to automate the management of the
Prisons in the state. Initially the project was launched in the Birsa Munda Central Jail,
Hotwar, Ranchi on pilot basis. The experience was also used to customize the software
jails of Jharkhand. In March 2008, the software was implemented in all the Jails of the
state. Next aim is to make deploy the Jail software in the 3 tire architecture and have the
centralized database for all the Jails of the state. Training was provided to all the
concerned in a phase wise manner. This has helped us in implementing the software.

6. Direct cost and time savings to avail services

This is a government centric project and no services to citizens at large are as such
delivered through the project. However, the consistency of the visitor management
system ensures that the visitors are allowed to visit the prisoners as allowed by the prison
rules.

This is a government centric project and no services to citizens at large are as such
delivered through the project.
 7. Direct cost and time savings to deliver services
No third party agency study has been undertaken. However, the project has lead to major
cost and resource savings for the prisons. Previously the prisoners were taken physically
to be produced in courts; this has now been eliminated due to the use of video
conferencing for the purpose. This is safer also these visits to judiciary could be used by
the criminals to escape.

No third party agency study has been undertaken. However, the project has lead time
savings for the police officials who would previously accompany the prisoners when they
had to be produced to the judiciary. This is now accomplished by video conferencing for
the purpose. This ensures that the staff does not need to be deployed for taking and then
bringing back the criminals for production in courts.

8. Replication
This project has been replicated across all the prisons in the state of Jharkhand.

9. Implementation model
The project has been conceptualized, implemented and funded by the state government.
The software has been developed by the National Informatics Center, NIC.

10. Technologies
The software is running in two tire architecture. a. Client Server environment b. SQL
Server 2000 as data base c. VB is used as front end.

11. Capacity building

The project has been a success due to the various capacity building efforts taken up by
the project team. Work shops were organized to apprise the prison staff of the changes
and the benefits that would accrue to them through the use of technology. Further,
training on the new system was imparted to the concerned officials so that they are
comfortable using the system.

12. Process Reforms

• Capturing visitor’s details at the entrance of the Jail
• Digital identification of the prisoners.
• Capturing Thumb impression of all the prisoners.
• Capturing prisoner’s detail digitally.
 • The MIS website is used by the authorities to know the details of the prisoners for
better decision making. The site also helps the jail authorities to manage the jail in
uniform manner.
• Amendment of Cr.P.C. to allow production of prisoner through video-linkage

13. Project Financials/Sustainability

The project is fully funded by the Government of Jharkhand.

14. Project Teams and Leadership

• Given the complexity and breadth of this project, interdepartmental teams
composed of senior level officials had to devote time on the project. The
organizations involved in bringing the project to fruition included DoIT, Law
department, Home department, NIC, JAP-IT etc. Some of the key individuals who
participated from these organizations were:
• • Mr. R.S.Sharma, Principal Secretary, Information and Technology Deptt. – He
sanctioned Video Conferencing units between prison and court apart from the
concept of RVJIS
• Mr. Sudhir Tripathy, Secretary, Home Department – He approved the project and
the allotment of resources for the various modules of the project
• Mr. Prashant Kumar, Secretary, Law Department – He initiated the legal
amendment of the Cr.P.C. i.e. process – reengineering
• Mr. Sunil Barnwal, Inspector-General of Prisons and Addl. CEO, JAP-IT – I was
closely involved in all aspects of project implementation right from project
conceptualization
• Mr. Shahid Ahmad, SIO, NIC – He supported the project by using his team of
software professional to develop the web enabled software for the project.

Further, as all the projects are prison oriented, all the prison Superintends, Jailors and
Officers at the prison headquarter, particularly Mr. Deepak Kumar Vidyarthi, A.I.G.
Prisons were keenly involved. Likewise, the video conferencing system at the Court end
for the production of prisoners from jail required the involvement of District and Session
Judge and concerned Chief Judicial Magistrate. The Acting Chief Justice of Jharkhand
High Court, Mr. M.Y. Iqbal, took keen interest in the said project.

15. Key project Outcomes

The project has been a great success. Some of the key services of the project are
• Complete record of prisoner’s individual and family details with health and
educational background
• Complete record of activities performed by prisoner for the purpose of grant of
remission by jail superintendent and Inspector-General as well as for inflicting
punishment for breach of jail discipline.
• Updated record of Correctional program attended by Prisoner
 • Record of wages kept in prisoner’s account for work performed in Prison
• Prisoner’s case details, dates of production in different jails
• Biometric features of prisoners
• Prisoner’s history ticket
• Complete record of visitors meeting prisoner
• Adherence to Jail manual in terms of number of visits by visitor to meet a
prisoner
• Web based MIS in offline mode with data being pushed everyday using SWAN.
Some of the benefits that have accrued to various stakeholders due to this project
are:
• Benefits to Prisons o Saving time and money on the movement of criminals for
production in courts o Adherence to service levels in terms of number of visits to
the jail by visitors to prisoners o Records of the criminals including their
biometrics which ensures that the prisoners are not duplicated / someone else does
not take place of a criminal in the jail while the criminal is allowed outside. O
Information and MIS reports available to the top officials for planning and taking
timely and informed decisions.
• Benefits to Prisoners and Visitors
• Adherence to jail manual means that the visitors and prisoners rights are not
violated
• Capturing of the records of the criminals and also the progress in terms of
correctional intervention ensures that there are better chances of the criminals
being absorbed in the mainstream once they are out of the jail.

16. Service users Feedback Mechanism

The Government intends to institute third party audits for the measurement of satisfaction
levels of the users. Though no study has been done till now to determine the satisfaction
levels of the users, the information on the ground suggests that prison staff is happy with
the implementation of the system as it helps them in doing their job effectively. Further,
the top officials are satisfied because this system helps provides them with better
information and records are available instantly. Further, the resource crunch in the
prisons has also been alleviated to a certain extent as the prison staff that had to be
deployed for producing prisoners in the courts can now be deployed for other tasks as the
prisoners are produced using video conferencing facilities provided by the system.

17. Implementation Challenges

• Technical difficulties and interdepartmental coordination in such large scale
networking and computerization Solution: A highly competent team of
professionals was mobilized to ensure that the complex and challenging tasks of
networking all the prisons is managed properly. Further, to ensure that there is
coordination amongst the departments an interdepartmental committee was
formed with secretaries of the concerned departments as its member. This ensured
timely resolution of all issues amongst the stake holders. Challenge
• Cultural change to ensure that the employees support the system Solution:
Workshops were conducted along with a general awareness campaign about the
project and the benefits that would accrue to the respective stakeholders. This
ensured that the employees supported the system implementation and cooperated
for the same. Challenge
• Lack of computer skills amongst employees Solution: Extensive training of the
employees for using computers and the application developed for the project was
undertaken to ensure that the system once function could be used effectively.
Challenge
• Convincing the government regarding the project Solution: The project team did
extensive investigations on the ills of the manual system and communicated the
benefits to all stakeholders due to the implementation of the project. Along with
the persistence of the project team and support of related stakeholders such as
courts, police etc. support for the project was mobilized.

18. Key Lessons learnt

• With proper change management, departmental employees are happy to cooperate
in ensuring the success of the e-Governance initiatives
• Doing a pilot before rolling out the project extensively ensures that no major
disruptions happen due to the introduction of a new and untested system
• e-Governance projects are not only helping in saving time and money but also
help in better adherence to the rules which in the manual system were easy to
violate

Project Contact Details

Sunil Kumar Barnwal , IAS
Inspector-General of Prisons
(Dept. of Home)
T. A. Division Building, HEC Campus, P.O.-Dhurwa,
Ranchi-834004, Jharkhand
skbarnwal@gmail.com