Prison Management: Not a Cakewalk

14,000 inmates, 40,000 fingerprints, 60,000 photographs-the numbers are
huge. But, the prison management system at the Tihar Jail makes administration a
simple task

Prison, together with the police, judiciary and security apparatus are an
integral part of any state as they play an important role with respect to
prisoners' right. The Prison Management Systems (PMS) developed and
implemented by the National Informatics Center (NIC) is an application, to give
the Tihar Jail authorities the right tools to enhance efficiency of the
administrative mechanism.

Nonetheless, implementing PMS in Tihar Jail, India's largest and Asia's
second largest jail, unquestionably could not have been a cakewalk. The Tihar
Jail houses over 14,000 inmates currently.

The application allows jail authorities to keep details pertaining to
inmates, which includes category of the prisoner, criminal record, year of
entry, biometric details at the time of their entry, prisoner number,
photograph, personal details (age, address, information-related to family
members, etc), medical details, lodging etc.

“The PMS allowed us to adopt a systematic and uniform approach for handling
information about prisoners in Tihar,” said Sunil Kumar Gupta, Law Officer-Central
Jail, Tihar.

“The application is good in dealing with over-populous prisons, such as
Tihar, which house more inmates than their sanctioned capacity,” said Rajiv
Saxena, Deputy Director General, NIC. The sanctioned capacity of Tihar is 5,648
prisoners.

PMS is a G2G and G2C e-governance tool. “Apart from creating transparency
and simplifying information handling, the application has helped in creating a
central database to provide information about all jails in the Tihar Prisons
Complex,” said Saxena. Tihar is a huge complex spread over 400 acres, with
over 10 jails.

Problems faced

Prior to the introduction of PMS in 2004, Tihar used the Prisons Inmates
Information System adopted in 1994. All jails had been computerized then. There
are eight NIC computer centers in the complex, one in each of the seven jails
and one in the prison HQ.

All these computer centers are connected to each other through Fiber Optic
LAN. Each center is equipped with a Pentium Pro Server and different nodes are
given to different sections. There is a computer center at the Tihar Jail
reception for public inquiry.

“Tihar's thick concrete walls were very difficult to drill. The problem
was aggravated as there were no route maps,” he said. “Besides, due to fear
of security issues, laborers were not allowed inside the jails, so we took the
help of prison inmates.”

PMS works with the on-line working-pattern of the prisons (registration,
movement and release). “The application has been crucial in providing
information to prison officials, about inmates under their custody,” said
Saxena. The prisoner database consists of details of 16,000 prisoners, 40,000
fingerprints, and 60,000 photographs.

Conceiving PMS

The seeds of the project were sown when the technical consultant to Tihar, NIC,
conducted a full systems study of the various processes, nodes and flow of
information within the jail. NIC had been supporting all computer operations of
the Tihar Prisons Complex.

Ensuring scalability

The application can be adopted in local jails as per their requirements. Saxena
said the application is supported by open database connectivity, which ensures
access to any data from any application, regardless of which database management
system (DBMS) is handling the data. Database connectivity makes it possible to
connect it to the database as per requirements. All master codes, pertaining to
15 master tables, can be modified as per requirement.

Managing visitors

Besides this, the Visitors Management System (VMS) is another application that
was introduced in 2005. The visitor database consists of details of 50,000
visitors along with their photographs. On an average, 3,000 visitors come to
Tihar daily. It has benefited visitors who earlier had to wait for hours to get
clearance.

The prison has further made way for using advance technology like use of
video conferencing from jails to prisons, CCTV, DFMDs and HHMDs. According to
Saxena, the prime intention is to integrate all the central jails of India with
the police departments for sharing information about prisoners at the national
level.

-URVASHI KAUL