by Tanaya P Kamlakar, Gaurav Jadhav, Akhilendra Singh, Mradul Singh
ABSTRACT
Prison reform reflects broader transformations in societal values, governance, and conceptions of justice. This study examines India’s contemporary correctional shift through the Model Prisons and Correctional Services Act, 2023 and its state-level implementation under the Maharashtra Prisons and Correctional Services Act, 2024, using Mumbai Central Prison (Arthur Road Jail) as an empirical case study. Conceptualising prisons as cultural institutions, the paper analyses how legal reform, digital governance, and administrative practice intersect to reconfigure incarceration from a punitive framework toward a rehabilitative and rights-based model. The research adopts a mixed-methods approach, combining doctrinal legal analysis with empirical fieldwork including semi-structured interviews with prison officials and institutional observations. Findings indicate that while the legislative framework emphasises dignity, rehabilitation, and reintegration, effective implementation remains constrained by chronic overcrowding, infrastructural limitations, staff shortages, and prolonged undertrial detention within a dense urban context. The study further demonstrates how technological interventions such as biometric kiosks, CCTV surveillance, e-prison management systems, and virtual communication platforms reshape prison governance, power relations, and inmate experiences, functioning simultaneously as mechanisms of surveillance and humanisation. Viewed through a cultural lens, the paper argues that contemporary prison reform in India signifies a broader social transformation in understandings of punishment, citizenship, and state responsibility. The study contributes to cultural and socio-legal scholarship by foregrounding prisons as critical sites of institutional, technological, and moral change in the Global South.
