Everything you need to know about the Correctional Processes of Crime

Correctional Processes of Crime

Sociological inattention to female offenders has extended to dealing with women only through the law-enforcement and correctional machinery. The implicit assumption is that female criminality is relatively low, and female criminals are ‘properly’ handled by the criminal justice system.

My contention, however, is that female criminal’s get unequal and discriminatory treatment within the correctional apparatus, if not within the justice apparatus, in our society. Though the courts do not discriminate against female offenders by imposing a sexual (double) standard upon them but in jails, we see sexual discrimination operating against female inmates at a variety of points.

The programmes and facilities in the correctional institutions for female offenders do not vary widely from one state to another. Most of the Female Reformatories are in poor condition as compared to institutions for male offenders.

The social experiences encountered by women inmates are decidedly negative ones, with the rules of conduct being more restrictive in women’s prisons than in men’s prisons.

Treatment programmes for female prisoners are either non-existent or markedly inadequate. Female prisoners are often excluded from training Programmes and parole facilities. The training programmes (mainly cleaning foodgrains, cutting vegetables, cooking and sewing) for female narrates are basically designed to prepare women to reenter the community as nineteenth-century domestics.

No effort is made to introduce programmes that would adequately equip the women to deal with the variety of social adjustment problems they are likely to encounter in modern society (see, Ahuja Ram, The Prison System, 1981; and “Inmates’ Adjustment to Prison Subculture”, Indian Journal of Social Work, Bombay, 1983).

Two methods in the main are being used at present in punishing and correcting the female offenders: imprisonment and release on probation. Between the two, the former is used about 20 times more than the latter.

Of the female offenders who are eligible to be released on probation, hardly 5 to 7 per cent are given the benefit of these services in India. Is imprisonment a correct method to deal with the female offenders? After all, what are the objectives of imprisonment?

The main objectives suggested are: social isolation, repentance, punishment, deterrence, and reformation. Do criminal women need to be isolated from the society? Are they really a threat to social solidarity and social organisation? Do they repent of their wrong deeds only after being sent to prison? Do they really require punishment for correction?

Will imprisonment deter potential offenders from indulging in similar offences? Do prisons function as correctional institutions? Do female prisoners get the right type of treatment and work in prisons? My contention is that since ‘family maladjustment’ or ‘role conflict in family’ or ‘pressure of primary relations’ is the main cause of crime in a large number of female criminalities, all female offenders do not need or deserve to be imprisoned.

Unless monopolistic organisation of prisons is changed, unless frustrations and stresses and strains to which inmates are subjected by the authorities are contained, unless better work-milieu in jail administration is provided, unless prison officials are weaned away from excessive individualism so that they can adapt themselves to the new values of case-work, imprisonment cannot be a right method to deal with the female offenders.

The imprisonment of a woman is also dysfunctional to her family in the sense that the family has to face a crisis of what Hill calls ‘dismemberment’ and ‘demoralisation’. The former refers to the crisis of absence of a member due to imprisonment and the latter refers to social disgrace and social stigma of the family due to its member’s criminality. Both make a woman’s husband and her children suffer emotional and social deprivations.

Furthermore, many women are forced to bring their young children to prisons. These children are so ill-treated and neglected that they suffer from serious problems. The age at which children ought to be educated and socialised is spent by such unfortunate children in jail without any opportunity to learn values and norms of society.

Since a majority of female offenders get only a short-term imprisonment (about 85%) and since imprisonment stigmatises persons instead of reforming them, these women surely can be given the benefit of probation system.

This is not to suggest that imprisonment should be totally abolished for female criminals. My contention is that women offenders have to be classified in different categories and only some categories of offenders need be imprisoned.

I categorise women criminals into five groups, namely, frustrated, emotional, revengeful, accidental and misled criminals, and believe that only the ‘revengeful’ and the ‘misled’ offenders deserve imprisonment.

Of the 325 criminals in my study, 20.4 per cent belonged to the first type, 28.6 per cent to the second type, 13.2 per cent to the third type, 27.5 per cent to the fourth type, and 10.3 per cent to the fifth type (Ahuja, Ram, “Female Murderers in India”, Indian Journal of Social Work, October 1970).

On this basis, it may be maintained that only about one-fourth of the total female offenders in our society need to be imprisoned.

Besides finding suitable alternatives to imprisonment to deal with the large number of ‘simple’ female offenders, some reforms are needed in prisons also to make their functioning more effective. Generally speaking, women inmates get discriminatory treatment in prisons. When males are assigned productive work, women are given unproductive assignments.

Males get special opportunities for earning remission which is mostly denied to women. Facilities of education and earning wages given to men in certain prisons are not provided to women in any prison.

Thus, the greatest need today is of modernising work assignments for female offenders, giving them more facilities to earn extra remission, introducing wage system, providing facilities for education and passing primary examinations, giving training in crafts which will enable them to become self-reliant, and introducing leave and furlough systems. All these measures and extensive use of the parole system will help humanise female life in prisons.

A few other suggestions may also be made for dealing with women accused of crime and women in custody:

i. After arrest, as far as possible, females accused of offences may be handled by women police.

ii. Free legal aid may be provided to female prisoners wherever necessary. In this connection, it may be suggested that:

(a) A list of all under-trial female prisoners be sent to the Legal Aid Committee of the district in which the jail is situated;

(b) Facilities should be provided to the lawyers nominated by the concerned District Legal Aid Committee to visit jail and interview the clients who have expressed their desire to have their assistance;

(c) Notices should be prominently displayed in jails regarding the proposed visits of lawyers of Legal Aid Committees.

iii. The courts could be more liberal in releasing women offenders on probation instead of awarding imprisonment of less than six months.

iv. New training programmes should be designed for female prisoners which may prove functional to their rehabilitation.

v. Education should be made compulsory for illiterate women prisoners imprisoned for more than one year.

vi. A guarded parole release every six months for at least a week to long-term offenders will be a great help in their social rehabilitation.

The Government of India appointed a National Expert Committee on Women Prisoners in May 1986: (i) to review conditions governing the treatment of women offenders in penal and correctional institutions and in police lock-ups; (ii) to examine the efficacy of institutional services for the reformation and rehabilitation of women offenders; and (iii) to suggest measures for ensuring effective handling of women offenders at various stages of the criminal justice process.

The Committee, appointed under the chairmanship of Justice Krishna Iyer, submitted its report in 1987. The important recommendations pertained to work, wages, training, education, social contacts, parole release, and care of children. Some of the recommendations were as follows (Report of National Expert Committee on Women Prisoners, 1989: 90-92):

i. The treatment of female prisoners should emphasise not their exclusion from the community but their continuing part in it. Community agencies should, therefore, be enlisted wherever possible to assist the staff of the institution in the task of social rehabilitation of the prisoners.

ii. Every institution (prison) should have social workers charged with the duty of maintaining and improving all desirable relations of prisoner with her family and valuable social agencies.

iii. Treatment should be individualised and for this purpose a flexible system of classifying prisoners in groups should be adopted.

iv. Treatment should be such as will encourage prisoners’ self-respect and develop sense of responsibility.

v. Prisons should use all the remedial, educational and moral forces of assistance which may enable the female offenders to lead a law-abiding and self-supporting life.

vi. It is not necessary to provide the same degree of security for every group of prisoners. It is desirable to provide varying degrees of security according to the needs of different groups.

vii. The medical services of the institution should seek to detect and treat any physical or mental illnesses or defects which may hamper the prisoner’s rehabilitation.

viii. Before the completion of sentence, it is desirable that the necessary steps be taken to ensure prisoners’ gradual return to life in society. This may include release on trial under some kind of supervision which must not be entrusted to the police.

ix. Efficient after-care programme may be provided by the government and/or private agencies which may be directed towards the lessening of prejudice against the prisoner.

Very often women criminals are themselves responsible for becoming victims of crime or deviant or aberrant behaviour. Let us take the example of a woman who is criminally assaulted by her brother-in-law, frequently beaten by her husband, denied the legitimate share in her husband’s/father’s land and property by her kin, or forced by circumstances to help her husband in illegal economic pursuits.

What happens when such a woman endeavors to free herself from the stultifying life her family imposes upon her? More often than not, the freedom and the redressed are sought, may be unintentionally, through behaviour which ultimately is labelled as ‘crime’.

Thus, since a large number of crimes committed by women are due to their adjustment problems of interpersonal relations in family and are not due to their criminal tendencies or disorganised personalities, there is a great need for a flexible sentencing policy for female criminals.

Since almost all female offenders (about 99%) are first offenders, and since criminal behaviour is not a significant part of their life organisations, their imprisonment and banishment from society fail to bring about the required change in attitudes and values inimical towards society.

The sentence has to be adjusted to the character and the treatment needs of the offenders and should take into account the causal factors in their crimes.

The present system of police investigation and punishment needs to be replaced by a system based on social investigation and consideration of personality make-up and the circumstances in which the crime was committed.

Sentences wholly unrelated to the feelings, attitudes and values of the offenders, and the compelling situations and circumstances in which these develop, are less likely to succeed in their retributive, deterrent or reformative aims.