PRISON laws have evolved over time, and specialised methods of imprisonment have developed to regulate prisons in many parts of the world.

The transition away from inflicting excruciating torture as a tool to develo-ping upright citizens is a profound shift, which we need to consider in our own context.

Offender rehabilitation is a scientific and systematic process of assessment, intervention and feedback with the aim of bringing offenders back into the social fold with minimised potential for future offences. Thus, rehabilitation has been acknowledged as a ‘right of the criminal’ in modern times.

This right is recognised to help the offenders get their life back on track and prevent relapse into criminal behaviour. Hence, various institutional and non-institutional programmes have been designed and offered for various categories of offenders throughout the world within and outside their correctional institutions to achieve this uphill challenge of the criminal justice system.

Within the domain of institutional programmes, Criminon, meaning ‘no crime’, is an important and effective model for inmate correction and ultimate reintegration. Criminon is an international non-profit-based programme dedicated to the rehabilitation of criminals by addressing the loss of self-respect which has been identified as a major reason why a person turns to a life of crime.

The programme was designed by L. Ron Hubbard, who, while talking about death penalty, said: “Killing a man is not justice, but merely a type of revenge.

It is not a solution. Nor does locking a person away for life solve the problem.”

The programme is based on courses that encourage learning how to learn, restor-ing self-respect, overcoming addiction, learning skills for life and many other such courses.

This type of rehabilitative programmes must be implemented in all prisons across Pakistan, with the aim of rehabilitating and ultimately reintegrating inmates in society.

Taniya Ahmed
Jamshoro

Published in Dawn, December 13th, 2022