Kathmandu, August 6

The Prison Management Procedure, 2016 recently enacted by the Government of Nepal has specified additional duties, responsibilities and conduct of civil servants and security personnel with respect to internal administration of prisons.

As per the procedure, on-duty civil and police employees will be required to behave with inmates and their visitors politely.

“The concerned jailer has to carry out monitoring and supervision on regular basis to ascertain whether the jailbirds are enjoying service and facilities to be provided by the government and refrain from dealing in and carrying out financial transactions with prisoners, naike (leader), saha naike (deputy leader) and chchaukidar (guard),” the law states.

Jail officials and police personnel were often found involved in such activities to help prisoners escape jail. The new legal provisions has fully discouraged the tendency of referring any jailbird to hospital on the pretext of medical check-up and illness.

“It will now require the jail administration to determine the duration of time for taking any jailbird to the designated hospital for medical treatment and bringing him/her back to prison with necessary security arrangements.

It has also been made mandatory to provide for a provision of visitor’s ID card and maintain record-keeping of the visitors,” reads the procedure.

In addition, the concerned jailer shall visit prisoners and inmates on a weekly basis for redressal of their complaints, if any, and carry out security screening of prisoners. Fair price shops being run in the prisons will be required to display price list.

The new law has also imposed a ban on participation of jail employees and police personnel in any feast organised by inmates, and receipt of any gift or cash. Similarly, security chief of the prison should monitor personnel under his/her command regularly and review security operations on a weekly basis.

“If the available human resources are not good enough to tackle any security challenge in the prison, the concerned security chief will report to the higher-up agency for support,” states the procedure.