Government Initiatives for Prison Reform in India: A Look at Policies and Committees

India’s prison system is one of the oldest in the world, rooted in colonial-era legislation that dates back to the Prisons Act of 1894. Decades after independence, the framework governing how prisoners are treated, classified, and rehabilitated has remained largely unchanged in practice – even as overcrowding, custodial abuse, and the neglect of women prisoners have grown into serious human rights concerns. To address this, the Indian state has, over the years, deployed a range of interventions: expert committees that diagnosed the problems, a model manual that prescribed solutions, and a judiciary that stepped in when both fell short. Understanding these three pillars – reform committees, the Model Prison Manual 2016, and Supreme Court interventions – gives us a clear picture of how far India has come, and how much still remains to be done.

Reform committees that shaped the conversation 🔗

The most significant attempt to systematically examine India’s prison crisis came through two key committees appointed by the central government. Their reports laid the foundation for every reform effort that followed.

The Mulla Committee (1980-1983) 🔗

The All India Committee on Jail Reforms, chaired by Justice A.N. Mulla, was set up in 1980 and submitted its report in 1983. It remains the most comprehensive review of the Indian prison system to date. The committee found conditions across Indian jails to be deeply inadequate – insufficient food, poor sanitation, ventilation problems, and an undertrained prison staff.

Among its major recommendations, the committee called for improving basic living conditions in prisons through adequate arrangements for food, clothing, sanitation, and ventilation. It also proposed the creation of an Indian Prisons and Correctional Service – an all-India service for recruiting prison officials uniformly across states, similar to the IAS or IPS. The committee stressed that after-care, rehabilitation, and probation must become integral parts of the prison service rather than afterthoughts. It also called for regular public and media visits to prisons to ensure transparency and accountability – a recommendation that was progressive for its time. The Mulla Committee also explicitly recognised the rights of women in prison and called for a dedicated focus on their welfare, setting the stage for future gender-specific reforms.

The Justice Krishna Iyer Committee (1987) 🔗

Four years after the Mulla Committee, the Government of India appointed a committee specifically focused on women prisoners – the National Expert Committee on Women Prisoners, chaired by Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer. The committee submitted its report in February 1988. Its terms of reference were narrower but its findings were pointed: women in Indian prisons were being held in conditions that compounded their vulnerability rather than addressing it.

The committee’s central recommendation was the induction of more women into the police force, particularly given their unique and essential role in dealing with women and child offenders. Having predominantly male custodial staff supervising women prisoners created conditions where abuse – including sexual exploitation – could occur with little accountability. The committee also called for improvements in women’s correctional facilities more broadly. The government forwarded these recommendations to state governments and union territories for implementation, though the pace of actual adoption remained slow and uneven across states.

The Model Prison Manual 2016: a blueprint for reform 🔗

Following a Supreme Court direction in the 1996 Ramamurthy case to bring about national uniformity in prison laws, the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) drafted a model prison manual, which was circulated to all states in 2003. But with changing times, new Supreme Court judgments, and international standards evolving, the 2003 manual needed updating. In December 2014, the Ministry of Home Affairs constituted an Expert Committee for this purpose, and on January 21, 2016, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh approved the revised document – the Model Prison Manual 2016.

The Ministry of Home Affairs designed this manual to bring basic uniformity to the laws, rules, and regulations governing prison administration across all states and union territories. It covers a wide range, from prison computerisation and security protocols to the rights of death-row inmates and the repatriation of foreign prisoners.

Special provisions for women prisoners 🔗

One of the most significant aspects of the 2016 manual is its dedicated chapter on women prisoners, informed by two key international frameworks: the UN Bangkok Rules (2010) – the United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Female Prisoners – and the Nelson Mandela Rules (2015), which set global minimum standards for treatment of all prisoners.

Key provisions for women under the 2016 manual include gender-sensitive training for all prison staff dealing with women inmates; pre-natal and post-natal care for pregnant women; restrictions on punishments like close confinement being applied to pregnant women or women with infants; focused counselling programmes for survivors of abuse; and after-care and rehabilitation measures designed to ease women’s reintegration into society. The manual also addresses children living with their mothers in prison – an often-overlooked aspect of women’s incarceration. It recommends well-equipped crèches, nursery schools, and access to food, medical care, and educational facilities for these children. To prevent social stigma, it even recommends that birth certificates of children born in prison should not indicate the place of birth as a prison.

The challenge of implementation 🔗

Despite being a progressive document, the Model Prison Manual 2016 faces a fundamental structural problem: it is advisory, not binding. Prisons are a state subject under Entry 4 of List II (State List) of India’s Constitution, meaning the central government can recommend but cannot compel state governments to adopt these guidelines. The Ministry of Home Affairs issued an advisory in May 2017 requesting all states and union territories to revise their existing prison manuals in line with the 2016 document, but adherence remains largely optional in practice.

The Parliamentary sub-committee on prison modernisation has visited multiple states and expressed disappointment at poor adoption of the manual’s provisions. As a report by the Ministry of Women and Child Development noted, prison systems in India are primarily designed around men and are not well-equipped to address the specific needs of women – a problem the manual seeks to correct but cannot enforce on its own. Out of approximately 1,300 prisons in India, there are only 31 exclusive women’s jails in 15 states and union territories. As of 2015, only 17 percent of the 17,834 women in prison were housed in women-only facilities; the rest lived in female enclosures of general prisons.

The Supreme Court’s role in pushing prison reform 🔗

Where committees have recommended and manuals have prescribed, it has often fallen to the Supreme Court of India to compel action. The Court has, over decades, expanded the legal horizon for prisoners’ rights by interpreting Article 21 of the Constitution – the right to life and personal liberty – in an increasingly broad and progressive manner. Its core position, established across several judgments, is that a person in prison does not lose their personhood, remains entitled to all human rights within the limitations of imprisonment, and must not be subjected to suffering beyond what incarceration itself involves.

Hussainara Khatoon v. State of Bihar (1979) 🔗

One of the earliest and most consequential interventions came in Hussainara Khatoon v. State of Bihar. A writ petition filed on behalf of undertrial prisoners in Bihar revealed that men, women, and children had been detained for years – some for longer than the maximum sentence for their alleged offence – without trial. The Supreme Court held that the right to a speedy trial is a fundamental right under Article 21 and directed systemic changes including the expansion of legal aid services. This case put the issue of undertrial overcrowding on the national map and remains a cornerstone of prisoners’ rights jurisprudence in India.

Ramamurthy v. State of Karnataka (1996) 🔗

The Ramamurthy v. State of Karnataka judgment is perhaps the most comprehensive Supreme Court assessment of what ails India’s prison system. The Court identified nine major systemic problems: chronic overcrowding, delays in trials, an overwhelming proportion of undertrial prisoners (then around 67 percent of the total prison population), inadequate prison staff, poor legal aid access, lack of a unified national framework, and the difficulty of segregating serious offenders from minor ones. The Court directed the state to take immediate steps to reduce overcrowding and, crucially, directed the preparation of a unified national model prison manual – the directive that eventually led to the 2003 manual and its 2016 revision. The judgment also emphasised that overcrowding directly violates the fundamental rights of prisoners under Article 21.

Re: Inhuman Conditions in 1382 Prisons (2017) 🔗

In 2017, the Supreme Court took suo motu cognizance – acting on its own initiative – of the conditions prevailing in 1,382 prisons across the country. The case, Re: Inhuman Conditions in 1382 Prisons, directed states to address overcrowding, lack of medical facilities, and abuse by custodial staff. As part of the proceedings, the Court directed the Ministry of Home Affairs and states to work towards implementing the National Model Prison Manual 2016 – reinforcing the manual’s importance while acknowledging that states had not done enough to adopt it voluntarily.

Custodial abuse and the protection of women prisoners 🔗

The Supreme Court has also directly addressed the sexual vulnerability of women prisoners. In multiple cases, the Court directed authorities to implement concrete measures to protect the safety and dignity of women inmates. The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative has noted that women prisoners face custodial rape, exploitation, and pressure to remain silent – problems that are structurally enabled by inadequate female staff in prisons and a lack of accountability mechanisms. The Court’s directions on CCTV installation, regular judicial inspections, and mandatory grievance redressal mechanisms for inmates all address aspects of this systemic vulnerability.

The Justice Roy Committee (2018) 🔗

Continuing its active role, the Supreme Court in 2018 established a three-member committee chaired by retired Supreme Court judge Justice Amitava Roy to study prison reforms across the country, with particular attention to overcrowding. The committee recommended the creation of special fast-track courts for minor offences pending for over five years, and the release of those accused of minor crimes on Personal Recognizance (PR) Bonds when they cannot secure surety for bail. These recommendations targeted the undertrial crisis – the single largest driver of overcrowding in Indian prisons.

What the gap between policy and practice reveals 🔗

Taken together, these three pillars – committees, manual, and judiciary – reveal both the ambition of India’s reform agenda and the structural limits on its execution. The committee recommendations have been forwarded to states for decades without consistent follow-through. The Model Prison Manual 2016 is comprehensive and progressive but legally non-binding, creating a situation where its provisions are only implemented where state governments choose to act. The Supreme Court has repeatedly intervened, but judicial directions on prison reform require ongoing monitoring and political will to enforce.

The situation of women prisoners in particular illustrates this gap. Despite progressive reforms in the legal framework, the practical reality for women in prison often falls far short. Most women in prison come from marginalised communities – Dalits, Adivasis, and religious minorities – making them doubly vulnerable: structurally disadvantaged before incarceration and insufficiently protected within it. The absence of adequate female staff, the concentration of most women in general prisons rather than dedicated facilities, and patchy implementation of healthcare and childcare provisions all point to a system that continues to treat women’s needs as secondary. In 2023, the Ministry of Home Affairs prepared a Model Prisons and Correctional Services Act to replace colonial-era legislation, sharing it with all states – a sign that reform efforts are ongoing, even if their pace remains frustratingly slow.

The legislative framework, on paper, represents genuine intent. The Mulla Committee gave a detailed diagnosis. The Krishna Iyer Committee specifically centred women. The 2016 manual aligned India’s standards with international norms. The Supreme Court has intervened repeatedly and forcefully. But a recurring pattern emerges across all of these: recommendations made, guidelines issued, judgments passed – and implementation lagging at the state level, where the actual responsibility lies. Prison reform in India is not a problem of vision; it is a problem of enforcement, political will, and adequate resource allocation.

What do you think? Given that prisons are a state subject in India and the central government can only advise rather than mandate, how can the gap between progressive policy recommendations and ground-level implementation be effectively closed? And considering the specific vulnerabilities of women prisoners – from custodial abuse to inadequate healthcare – should India prioritise non-custodial alternatives for women convicted of minor, non-violent offences?

References

1. https://www.mha.gov.in/sites/default/files/2022-09/PrisonAdmin17072009%5B1%5D.pdf
2. https://www.mha.gov.in/sites/default/files/Mulla%20Committee%20-implementation%20of%20recommendations%20-Vol%20I.pdf
3. https://unacademy.com/content/upsc/study-material/internal-security/prison-reforms/
4. https://www.clearias.com/prison-reforms/
5. https://blog.ipleaders.in/legal-backdrop-prison-reforms/
6. https://www.mha.gov.in/en/divisionofmha/Women_Safety_Division/prison-reforms
7. https://www.pib.gov.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=134687&reg=3&lang=2
8. https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/library/resource/women-in-prisons-india/
9. https://www.ijrar.org/papers/IJRAR1AXP008.pdf
10. https://thelegalquorum.com/case-summary-hussainara-khatoon-v-state-of-bihar-1979-air-1369-1979-scr-3-532/
11. https://www.lawweb.in/2025/03/llm-notes-custodial-deviance-in-indian.html
12. https://www.humanrightsinitiative.org/download/1586260789Rights%20of%20Women%20Prisoners.pdf
13. https://thelaw.institute/criminal-justice-processes/legal-reforms-women-prisoners-india/