CONSTITUTIONALISING PRISON REFORMS IN INDIA: PRISONERS' RIGHTS, CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM AND THE TRANSFORMATIVE CONSTITUTION

Abstract

Prisons in India are under Entry 4 of List II of the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution, it is a subject that is mainly under the state domain, prisons still are administered through the colonial-era Prisons Act, 1894 and State Prison Manuals. Yet the last four decades of constitutional adjudication have established, beyond serious dispute, that imprisonment curtails a convict's physical liberty without extinguishing the remainder of her constitutional personality. This article argues that prison reform in India can no longer be understood merely as an exercise in penological policy; it must be understood as an exercise in constitutional governance. Examining Articles 14, 15, 19, 20, 21, 22, 32 and 226, read together with the Directive Principles in Articles 38, 39 and 39A, the article traces the judicial construction of a body of "prison jurisprudence" from Maneka Gandhi through Sunil Batra, Hussainara Khatoon, D.K. Basu, Re: Inhuman Conditions in 1382 Prisons and, most recently, Sukanya Shantha v. Union of India (2024). It then examines how the new criminal law codes i.e., the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 together with the Model Prisons and Correctional Services Act, 2023, purport to carry this constitutional vision into legislative and administrative practice, particularly through Section 479 BNSS on undertrial detention, the introduction of community service as a mode of punishment, and the reform of parole, furlough and remission. The article argues that India's prison system stands at an unfinished transition from prison as a place of custody, to prison as a constitutionally regulated institution, to prison as a correctional and rehabilitative institution and that the persistence of overcrowding, custodial violence, caste-based labour, and uneven implementation of model instruments shows that this transformation remains substantially incomplete. It concludes with recommendations for aligning prison administration with the transformative promise of the Constitution.