THE chaos that gripped Larkana Central Jail until yesterday had been years in the making. The delay in introducing prison reforms had led to a fertile environment for criminal elements to routinely abuse the law even when they were supposedly being punished for breaking it. Last week, the inmates took 10 jail officials hostage to compel the new prison administration to allow the free flow of contraband items on jail premises. Thankfully, all the officials have now been released, and the protesting prisoners are back in their barracks. They had apparently been ‘spoiled’ by the previous jail superintendent under whose watch items such as mobile phones, drugs and alcohol circulated freely among the prisoners. Tensions between the new jail superintendent and the prisoners had been ongoing for months.

The situation raises several questions about the role of the Sindh home department as well as the professional capabilities of the jail officials. Moreover, Larkana Central Jail is one of the most overcrowded prisons in the country. While it has a sanctioned strength of 650 prisoners, it actually houses a total of 1,033, with 482 among them undertrials. For years, experts and activists have pointed out the problem of overcrowding in jails and how it burdens the prison system. There is ample evidence linking horrendous living conditions to long-term antisocial and aggressive behaviour. This also means that prisoners convicted of being tried for petty crime often find themselves in the company of hardened criminals whose pernicious influence is hard to escape. This situation, combined with severely outdated, underfunded and understaffed prison departments — where officials remain underpaid, unmotivated and untrained — widespread political interference and a disinterested state is a sure-shot recipe for disaster. The recent crisis in Larkana Central Jail is akin to a charge sheet against all the relevant authorities. The government should take this incident as a wake-up call and set about reforming the prison system to prevent similar crises from erupting in prisons in other parts of the country.

Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2022