Handling the cactus: The Challenges (Part IV)

The word prison or jallu, immediately evoke an unpleasant and unacceptable image in our mind.
This is the place where you and I definitely do not wish to live. …where we do not wish our children to end up.
This is the place where the people who do the bad are sent to.
We do not wish our children , our brothers or sisters to waste away in the rotten cells of any prison.
However, many of our children or our family members do end up in the jallu, sometimes for short periods or sometimes for long periods. It is very unfortuntate….but this is a reality which we cannot ignore. There are and always will be a percentage of people who would go against the established rules and laws, there will always be people in the society who would commit crimes. They must be segregated from the society and they must serve their sentences…in prisons.

However, it is the duty of the public to offer the opportunity of rehabilitation even to these offenders, such that the prison becomes a place which is more than just a place to lock up people.
The hope with which rehabilitation programmes are initiated in prisons and other such centres is that some day…the person who offended would reform.

However, there is research which shows that this is not a smooth or easy process. Reforming or rehabilitating an offender can be a challenging process indeed.
For example, the social structures of prison, the power hierarchy within the prison can obstruct the process of reform and rehabilitation.

Often the prisoners acquire knowledge, and pick up skills within the prison which may actually strengthen their desire to commit further crimes. This can happen especially when hard core criminals are not segregated from first time offenders. A silent process of initiating the young, first time offenders take place, where the young are gradually introduced to new information on crime, new knowledge and skills, they also begin to form new relationships.

These individuals spend hours away from the society, often with little or no interaction with the rest of the world. And many times when they do, the world they come out to is not the world they left behind. Further, the seal of criminal is stamped on their forehead and the society is not ready to either forget or forgive. The society is often not willing to trust them with employment or is not willing to allow the individual back in the mainstream of social living...the taboo of going to prison...can be a lifelong stima for some people.

Isolated and damned as different , the lot is often left with each other for support. The prison experience has become the most significant aspect in the lives of many who lived through their time at prison. They have the same memories of shared experiences....and the reality of living outside of the prison leave them with common problems.

One of the greatest challenges that we as a society face is understanding and accepting these realities. Why do those who return to the community reoffend so soon, why is it they find it so difficult to adjust to th society and accept the societal norms ?

Can we even dare to think about what could have happened to the prisoners during the time they were in the prison?
This is ofcourse talking beyond the politics of prison conditions, police torture etc......
Could it possibly be that the prison experience have left them with lasting imprints?
It is true that within a prison they will have to follow the prison rules and regulations too but besides these they would also have had to abide by their own rules for themselves. They would have belonged to a prison subculture, they would have had to belong to a hierarchy of authority among themselves and among their peers, sometimes adopting roles, picking up attitudes and behaviours they may carry with them for the rest of their lives.
Breaking through all this is a part of the rehabilitation process, one that involves definite challenges.