Goa jail software grabs Centre’s attention

Impressed with Goa's home-built, prize-winning prison software PRISMS, the central government has "in principle" decided to implement it in prisons across the country, software designers Goa Electronics Limited (GEL) said. PRISMS won the national CSI-Nihilent e-governance Award of Excellence in 2009 among 60 other projects and attracted the attention of Bihar and Delhi.

Officials of GEL, a Goa government undertaking, recently gave demonstrations in both the states. PRISMS is a jail booking and management system that networks all five jails in Goa with the office of the Inspector General of Prisons in Panaji and supports video conferencing between the jails.

A GEL team, comprising chairman Mahendra Khandeparkar, managing director B S Borkar and chief executive officer Revati Muzumdar recently met the joint secretary — home affairs, Nirmaljit Singh Kalsi and director, ministry of home affairs Neeraj Kansal in Delhi and demonstrated the software. The software also evinced keen interest from Bihar, when GEL officials gave a demonstration of PRISMS to jail authorities there. Borkar told TOI that Central government officials were very impressed with the versatility of PRISMS and have "in principle" agreed to implement it on a national scale.

GEL has been asked to submit a business proposal, which they will do shortly, Borkar said. He further added, "Since we are a state government corporation, they have no problems in dealing with us. Also, they appreciated the fact that jail authorities are themselves using the software with hardly any help from GEL. But we have invited them to Goa to see it's practical functioning."

GEL officials said PRISMS is unmatched due to its high number of modules, user friendliness and transparency. Now GEL is set to launch its second phase in Goa to enhance it even further. Borkar said that central government officials have also requested it to include the phase 2 applications of PRISMS. Goa's inspector general of prisons Mihir Vardhan who had recommended PRISMS to his counterparts in all Indian states, said phase 2 will lead to the empowerment of prisoners.

In phase 2, touch screen kiosks will be installed in prisons. The kiosks will enable prisoners to find out details of wages earned in prison, the remission in sentence, probable date of release, status of parole application, etc. Vardhan said an even more useful feature is that it will warn officials if the prisoner languishes in jail longer then the sentence his crime attracts.

"Let's suppose a crime of rape attracts imprisonment for eight years. Sometimes in practice, the trial goes on for 10-12 years. This may not be common in Goa but it happens in other parts of the country. Our software will remind officials that the prisoner has already completed his sentence," Vardhan said. Yet another feature of PRISMS phase 2 is the central messaging service.

If a prisoner escapes, the system will send an SMS to all phone numbers stored in the system, be it police, media, etc. within and beyond the state. Goa launched PRISMS on February 19 last year and become the first state in the country to have a first-of-itskind centralized jail monitoring system for the entire state.