RIGHT BEHIND THE BARS
A prisoner is entitled to all his fundamental rights unless his liberty has been constitutionally curtailed. For example, prison authorities are not permitted to inflict cruel and unusual punishment upon prisoners who violate prison rules. Prisoner’s rights as to protection under the Constitution in prison environment are as given below:
1. Solitary Confinement: Solitary confinement is not unconstitutional so long as elementary conditions of decency are maintained.
2. Right against cruel and unusual punishment: As a general guideline, other specific punishment must not include chains, handcuffs in cells, tear gas or removal of clothing except in special circumstances. There must be no corporal punishment because such severity offends modern concept of human dignity. Against this background, it has not yet been held that s*xual deprivation is cruel and unusual punishment.
3. Freedom to communicate: A prisoner is entitled to communicate subject to prison rules. He or she even has the right to communicate his grievances to the Court or the media.
4. Religious expression: In general even in prison a prisoner has the right to his religious beliefs. However, dieting requests for religious observance remain a problem and the refusal of requests for specific food during holy period has been judicially upheld.
5. Right to medical care: The prisoners are entitled to the kind of medical treatment that current medical practice prescribed for most of the patients with those kinds of ailments.
6. Rehabilitation: No court has ever directly held that a prisoner has the right to rehabilitation, even though penologists do not disclaim the relevance of rehabilitation in the overall prisoner programme.
7. Protection: Exposure to s*xual assaults unfortunately is a fact of prison life. A prisoner’s most effective legal remedy, where officials fail to protect him from these assaults in a civil suit or a writ petition before the High Court or the Supreme Court.
8. Right to compensation: Right to compensation is the right to claim monetary compensation from the violation of the fundamental rights particularly under Article 21 of the Constitution has also been recognized in a number of cases.
NB: Last but not the least, conviction of a crime may cause a prisoner to lose certain rights like voting rights, right to move freely, right to hold public office, employment in government and public sector, but still he or she enjoys certain basic rights.
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