EVERY country faces some issues where a part of the population is behind bars for some reason or another. However the purpose of a prison shouldn’t just be locking people away, that’s inefficient. It should be about changing behaviour and patterns. We can implement what is happening in Brazil where when a prisoner finishes a book, he gets four days off sentence. This is called ‘Redemption through reading’.

Back in 2012, the Guardian reported that with more than half a million inmates, nearly half of them in pre-trial detention, Brazil’s prisons are among the most overcrowded and violent in the world. Not exactly a place where innovative penal thinking stands much chance, you may think. But think again. For Brazil’s prison crisis is now the midwife of some inventive programmes to boost early release from which Britain, with our own prison overcrowding problems, could learn.

“Brazilian prisoners can exercise on stationary bikes which charge batteries to power local street lighting; in return for every three eight-hour shifts, the inmates get a day off their sentence — as well as losing weight and getting fitter. Even more novel, so to speak, is a ‘redemption through reading’ scheme in which prisoners in four of the country’s toughest jails get four days off their sentence for reading a classic work of literature, philosophy or science, and writing an essay about it – up to a limit of 12 books a year.”

It is as simple as that. The prisons can have an approved list of non-fiction, fiction, philosophy, science related or even self-help books.

M. M. Waqas
Islamabad

Published in Dawn, June 27th, 2019