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This one may not look as dismal as Madhur Bhandarkars jail, for those who have seen the latest Bollywood flick would know what goes behind the bars. The difficulties associated with manual compilation, analysis, and retrieval of prisoner records; errors in calculation of release date of prisoners; etc, could make prison management a herculean task for any jailer.

This is what led the inspector general of prisons, Goa to propose the implementation of prisons management system (PRISMS) software in August 2008. This system was sought to augment the efficiency of jail staff and all related processes of the prisons. With sixteen functional modules, 100% implementation of PRISMS has been enabled across four judicial lock-ups, one judicial lock-up-cum-sub jail, and one central jail in the state. A 24x7 jail booking and management system, PRISMS provides information on incarcerated adults and juveniles. Its modular three-tier architecture enables implementation in phases and each module can be added exclusively. PRISMS is designed with easy to use menus and a comprehensive security system.

PRISMS reports provide reliable and timely information on all aspects of prisoner management, including inmate personal property, visitor activity, mental and medical health information, inmate movements in and out of the facility, commissary inventory and inmate purchases, medication updates, remission, parole and furlough, case and crime info, and population statistics. Some of these reports serve as official document forms with signature lines provided. It also calculates wages, attendance and remittance towards the common victim compensation fund, expenditure for legal services, savings and day-to-day expenses.

This project had been designed, developed and implemented by Goa Electronics (a subsidiary of EDC, a Government of Goa undertaking) with the active support from the prison department, IG prisons, and the district magistrate for North Goa. The software, which was implemented at a cost of Rs 47 lakh, has also helped Goa implement the common victim compensation fund as recommended by the Supreme Court. Till date, approximately nine families of victims have been handed over compensation to the tune of about Rs 2 lakh.

Tech Behind PRISMS
The PRISMS software is hosted on the NIC SAN server at secretariat, Panaji, Goa. All the jails and judicial lock-ups are connected via 2 MBPS lease line to the central server. The software functions with the aid of a Windows 2003 Server, a development platform of ASP.NET with C#, a SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition as DBMS and a web-based application with three-tier architecture and centralized database to provide crystal reports. The clients are mainly Windows XP Professionals, and the disaster recovery management is done by the NIC state data center. The additional inspector general of prisons was appointed as the nodal officer for the project. The superintendent or jailor of each jail was appointed as project assistant for his respective jail. Apart from this, four implementation engineers were also appointed to handle day-to-day implementation issues. The nodal officer holds regular meetings with project assistants and GEL officials, in case there are any issues in the use of the software or if any upgradation is required.

The software has a web based application and user-friendly design, and enables uniform data entry and validation, has increased efficiency, provides access through user-defined login ID and password, and all transactions related to prisoners are based on biometric identification. With the implementation of the centralized online system, authorities at the head office can obtain the status of prisoners in each prison at any time. As the system is completely automated, PDR is generated on one click.

In the second phase, it is proposed to enable provision of complete information about each prisoner to all departments like police, passport, etc. After all, life existseven in prisons. So why not make it a little better?

Shilpa Shanbhag
shilpas@cybermedia.co.in

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