Bangalore (AsiaNews) - Prison Ministry India, a national voluntary organisation recognised by the National Commission for Justice and Peace of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India (CBCI), is training 500 priests, nuns and lay people to be fulltime volunteers in the country's prisons. Training will begin in May in Bangalore, Karnataka.
Set up in 1986 by a group of students for the purpose of helping inmates on their way to rehabilitation, the Prison Ministry now has 850 branches and 30 rehabilitation centres around the country for ex-convicts and children at risk. More than 6,000 volunteers work with 370,000 prisoners.
In 2011, it conducted 197 awareness programmes in parishes, colleges, schools and other institutions.
"We have invited priests, nuns, brothers and lay people who can devote themselves fulltime to the prison ministry," PMI national coordinator Fr Sebastian Vakumpadan told AsiaNews. "We give them a month-long intensive training in Bangalore and Kerala. Then we send them two at a time to the various states of India according to their language and choice," where "they will be guided by a PMI coordinator for the following year."
"There is a lot to do," Fr Sebastian explained. "We must change the atmosphere in prisons and turn them into reformative structures to change people's attitude and improve the reintegration of ex-inmates in society."
India had 1,393 prison facilities according to the 2010 report by the National Crime Record Bureau of India. Overcrowding is a major problem.
Existing prisons can hold up to 320,450 but they currently house 368,998 (115.1 per cent occupancy rate), with 240,098 (65.1 per cent) awaiting trial and 125,789 (34.1 per cent) already convicted.
Men represent 95.9 per cent of the inmate population; women, 4.1 per cent.
The state of Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of prisoners (82,673), followed by Madhya Pradesh (31,318) and Bihar (29,700).
Prisons in Chhattisgarh are the most overcrowded (237 per cent), followed by the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (227.7 per cent).