BENGALURU: Home Minister G Parameshwara on Saturday inaugurated a newly established Central Command Centre to facilitate swift inspections and follow up actions, preserve evidence, enable real-time monitoring and ensure coordination with other prisons whenever illegal activities are detected in correctional centres.
The unit will function from the office of the director general of police (DGP) and the director general of prisons and correctional services on Sheshadri Road in Gandhinagar.
“The command centre will monitor 1,076 CCTV cameras installed in eight central prisons (Bengaluru, Mysuru, Shivamogga, Ballari, Dharwad, Belagavi, Kalaburagi and Vijayapura) and four district prisons (Mangaluru, Tumakuru, Bengaluru South and Chamarajanagar). Soon, this will be extended to all district and taluk prisons. In the Bengaluru Central Prison at Parappana Agrahara, 332 CCTV cameras have been integrated with Artificial Intelligence-based Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), crowd analysis and prisoner and staff movement monitoring. The command centre is monitored round the clock by 20 personnel,” Parameshwara said. All untoward incidents observed during CCTV surveillance at the Central Command Center are being recorded in a register.
The Superintendent of Prisons at the Head Office has been appointed as the Nodal Officer. Instructions are issued to the prison superintendents in case of any untoward incident, to take immediate action and submit a report to the head office. A daily summary of such incidents is being obtained during the lock-up and unlock times of prisons.
“The entire jail staff will be cautious henceforth because of the command centre. Bengaluru Central Prison is always in the news as photographs and videos keep surfacing and with the command center, such illegal activities could be stopped,” the home minister said.
DG & IGP MA Saleem, DGP (Prisons & Correctional Services) Alok Kumar and other senior officers were present at the inauguration of the centre.