Nawa-e-Waqt, Pakistan's largest circulating Urdu Daily, 17 August 1978. Review of Jail Reforms, translated by Shamim Malik

Jails are a necessary evil in our society. On the one hand, maintaining them is inevitable, given the existence of illicit behaviour in society. On the other hand, however, verbal claims and political slogans apart, very little attention has been paid to devise a strategy in order to produce healthy or productive results. Therefore, the abhorrent reality of jails is still in existence and instead of reforming prisoners by helping inmates to stay away from a criminal life and teaching them to have respect for the law, prison experience in Pakistan puts them on a path of addiction to a sinful and criminal life style. Through this book, the scholarly author not only enlightens his readers by providing a glimpse into what goes on in these prisons, he also makes some solid and productive suggestions to the authorities that could produce far better results.

The book starts with the narrative of Prisoner “X” making a reference to a more humane treatment of prisoners and then in later chapters, expounds on subjects such as the methods of jail inspections, despising prisoners, making them take their shoes off when sitting, attempts to create in them an inferiority complex, prisoners’ age, sexual orientation, training to commit crimes, nature of the crime committed and the pitfalls of categorization based on it and its negative impact, adverse impact of recreation causing more harm than good, violation of rules and regulations found in jails’ standard operating procedures regarding written correspondence and jail visits, rules and regulations pertaining to meals, and the nature of crimes committed and the punishment imposed have been discussed in detail and many important issues have been pointed out in this book.

Keeping in mind the author’s resourcefulness, scholarship, clarity of thought and patriotism, if you pay attention to the details as individuals in authority, there are several practical ideas to reform the jail system The book is also worth reading for a common reader since the writing is reflection on the enlightened author’s love for humanity and his eloquent, colloquial writing style