Kiran Bedi on Correction and Rehabilitation of Offenders

She is what she is, with unbelievable energy, dogged determination, an eye piercing with an intent gaze; she is Kiran Bedi standing tall with a deep voice that enthrals millions soul. She repeatedly proved with her deeds that it needs an ardent desire and strong will to bring a change -- a change that will echo in years to come.

•   E-mail Article
•   Printer Friendly
•   Text-Size    

This lady with her persistent will to bring a change was invited to give a lecture in an interactive session on “Correction and Rehabilitation of Offenders” organised by LLM Students Union, Law Faculty of Delhi University on March 10.

Introducing that from day one in her police career, she kept a corrective approach and was attracted to the service in lure of the help she could render to people and not because of the power attached to it.

She said to the crowd of fervent listeners, “I was all the time working on prevention strategies, I would love to talk you about power of prevention in the police, because I believed in the power of prevention and whenever I had arrested any body my whole approach was to find out that what made the particular person to commit the crime. Why did a particular person commit that crime? Was it greed, was it peer pressure, was it social, was it temptation, was it psychiatric issue, what was it?”

“But I was always curious to know, that curiosity led me to back on prevention. I could as a police officer work on it or I could plan my prevention strategies in such a way that could largely benefit society, because being a practicing practitioner if you don’t believe in the power of prevention, you may never believe in the power of correction,” she added.

“There is one common emotion that connects prevention and correction, and it is sensitivity and you have to be very sensitive or contentious to work on prevention and correction,” she further explained.

Her lecture was more on the practical aspects based on her experiences in various jails and how a person can contribute to bring reforms in our prison. She stressed on finding out circumstances that led a person to commit the crime.

Describing our prison as holding institutes and human godowns with no or little scope of correction, she draws attention on the need to bring a change in our Prison Act.

She talked at length on the plight of poor prisoners (almost 98%) who are uneducated and the way one can bring internal reforms as most of the prisoners are uneducated, ignorant and have respect to benign authority.

Her tenure as an IG in Tihar was phenomenal and she brought the voluminous change one could not have imagined in such a short span. She championed as an effective officer and entered the heart of prisoners through her deeds.

She questioned why not Tihar Jail as a model be reflected in other jail, where education be introduced free of cost, where teachers were offenders with academic background, where books were donated by schools and NGOs, where visitors contributed pencils and copies. Now Tihar jail is a housed libraries and school is a part of jail life.

She asked where is the burden, from where has the money came and who bore the cost of study materials. She proved that her approach was not borrowed but it was developed based on her observation of our composite culture.

With the help of jailors and other officials she could introduce communal harmony and the negative being of a person was being pushed out with the help of education and involving people in religious sermons of respective faiths.

This benevolent speaker through her lecture motivated and ignited the minds to do something for the society as she remains the perfect example who believed in herself and that you need to have perseverance as nothing comes easily.

S.N Singh, Dean of Law faculty while thanking her talked briefly about retribution to the offenders. He described punishment as the last and the least effective instrument for the prevention of the crime.

Dr. Singh later said that punishments only harden people and increases estrangements, which in his opinion should serve a purpose.

He sought an answer when he asked, “What more punishment you can give to offenders, who are already been punished by being away from their family members, by being enclosed in the big concrete houses with restricted movement.”

He hailed Kiran Bedi as a fighter who hoped against hope and asked the students to be focused and oriented like her.

He said that the purpose of jail should be “reform and correction” and asked that if an offender is not changed behind the bars as a person what good he will do for the society when he is released.

The lecture was to incite the legal community to take collective responsibility to plug the loopholes in the justice delivery system; it was also a life time experience for many to share the first hand experience from the person who had gone through the system, who had done it and practiced it.