THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Enhancing digital security infrastructure, setting up new central prisons, and maintaining a repository of sharp-edged tools kept in prison workshops to avoid misuse by inmates.
These are some of the major recommendations made by a panel that looked into the safety lacunae in prisons in the state, highly placed sources confirmed to TNIE.
Phasing out physical production of accused persons before courts to root out their unwanted interaction with outsiders is another recommendation of two-member panel appointed by the state government following the sensational jail break of Govindachamy from the Kannur central prison, and it will file the report soon.
The panel comprising former state police chief Jacob Punnoose and retired High Court Judge C N Ramachandran Nair was appointed on July 26, 2025, a day after the dramatic escape of Govindachamy, a rape-murder convict, from the high-security block of the Kannur central prison.
The report highlighted the need for enhancing security measures in prisons by installing sophisticated systems, including AI-enabled cameras and motion sensors.
To prevent trafficking of drugs, communication devices and weapons, body scanners operated by police personnel should be installed at prison entrances. The prisoners returning to jails should be subjected to a thorough screening using these scanners, the report said. It also placed thrust on the need to reduce interaction of prisoners with outsiders during their transfer and travel to hospitals and courts. Another significant recommendation is to exclusively produce the accused before the court via videoconferencing. For this, additional rooms should be constructed in prisons, it said.
The panel also cautioned that careless operation of workshops such as carpentry units attached to prisons raises threat perception as the sharp-edged tools there could be used by the inmates for sinister purposes. To deal with this, an inventory of workshop tools should be maintained and examined daily.
‘Prisoners sentenced to RI should be made to work’
Govindachamy had used a hacksaw blade to cut the iron bars of his cell to break free. The report said those sentenced to rigorous imprisonment should be made to work in jails.
However, owing to a lack of cultivable land, there were issues in providing them work. To tide over this, the government should take over underutilised land owned by the Plantation Corporation of Kerala and hand it over to the prisons department. Land in Cheemeni and in some parts of Pathanamthitta can be converted into farmlands, it observed.