One of the most devastating outcomes of anyone’s incarceration is his total lack of communication with outside world. This results in aberrational behavior on the part of the inmate. It tells upon his mental health. It also leads to smuggling of cell-phones by the inmates into the prisons. Such smuggling of cell-phones leads to all types of security hazards. There is also no denying the fact that one of the major sources of corruption in the prisons all over the world is the facility of interview for which prison administration gets flak from the society. It definitely is a violation of the rights of any inmate as citizen of the country. It is to address all these issues that a provision has been made in the West Bengal Correctional Services Act, 1992 that every prisoners shall have the right of communication
Important Information
Ongoing Reforms
Women & Children
Video
Telephone Booth Facility
with relatives and friends as permissible under Rules. However, other than interview across the window and writing letters there is hardly any other way of communication across India except in the State of Karnataka. The writing of letters is always not possible by the illiterate inmates. There is no denying that letter writing is also gradually becoming out dated. The telephone facility is now being increasingly allowed to prison inmates in many parts of the world.
One cannot however, be oblivious to the dangers involved if the inherent security concerns are not addressed properly while thinking of such a facility. We have introduced telephone booths for the inmates of correctional homes in the State but after addressing all such security concerns. The unique sim-less telephone facility has been designed for us by Vodafone Idea Ltd on our request.The CTS pilot project of the facility was inaugurated at DumDum Central Correctional Home by Sri Akhil Giri, Hon’ble MIC, Jails & Social Welfare Depts. on September 26, 2023 and Sri Arijit Ghosh, DGM Vodafone Idea Limited features:
Officer, Vodafone Idea Ltd. in the inauguration ceremony presided over by Sri Laxmi Narayan Meena, IPS ADG & IG of Correctional Services ,West Bengal. The unique telephone facility has the following features:
- The correctional home authorities provide Vodafone Idea Limited with a list of inmates opting under the project. Vodafone Idea Limited has given their CTS solution for the Inmate telecalling facility.
- Vodafone creates for each of the inmates opting for the project by assigning him / her an unique ID.
- The subscriber inmate is asked to specify three numbers at the time of his / her admission in the correctional home which are fed into the database.
- Only outgoing calls can be made from FWP phones which are sim based and can call out only a single IVRS number which is managed by Vodafone Idea Limited.
- No calls to numbers not notified by the inmates at the time of admission are allowed by the system itself after cross checking in real time.
- All the calls are recorded and available to the authorities for review.