KOZHIKODE: The social justice department’s (SJD) ambitious programme, ‘Nervazhi,’ meant for the prisoners has come to a standstill since December. This is despite the decision to expand the project to the entire state from January 2016. Nervazhi was started on the lines of the global understanding that punishment in prison hardly refines the convicted. It dusts off the central rule, Probation of Offenders’ Act of 1958, which stipulates that the convicted be released on probation in one’s own home based on the report submitted by the probation officer.
If implemented in the entire state, 2,700-odd prisoners languishing in jails will benefit. The Act excludes those convicted for death, life, under treason, prevention of food adulteration Act, narcotic drugs and psychotropic substance Act and smuggling. The pilot project was a success in Kollam, Pathanamthitta, Wayanad and Kannur districts. “There was hundred per cent increase in the inquiry report sought by the First Class Judicial Magistrates regarding the potential probationers in these four districts. Judicial officers were overwhelmed by the initiative” said V.K. Jithendran, former SJ department director. The project was kickstarted during his tenure.
“The project aims to refine the offender by allowing him to live with his family at home and to stamp out the social stigma attached to an offender's family. There were umpteen cases of offender's children discontinuing education due to that stigma,” said a top official at SJ department who was part of the project. He pointed that that revamping Nervazhi would be the right way to address the Supreme Court’s recent finding that all the 21 jails in Kerala have 150 per cent more prisoners than allowed. Yet not a single meeting had been convened on the project since December and the special officer post has also been scrapped.
