JAIL Reforms and Prison Management are two distinct and different terms. So far whatever the jail authorities in Goa have done, including introducing video conferencing facility for prisons and prison management system is purely an exercise of prison management.

It would be wrong to construe prison management as jail reforms. Over crowding of Goan jails makes it explicit that no effort has been made to bring about structural reforms in jail management. The five jails at Aguada, Sada, Panaji, Mapusa and Margao have been housing 445 inmates against the collective capacity of 356 prisoners. There are at least 115 under trial prisoners in Goa. It implied that the process of prosecution of Goa police has been quite slow. With the increase in the number of crimes and resulting increase in arrests of culprits, the government should seriously think of providing a better jail set-up. The government must expedite the decision made in 2002 to construct a new jail for accommodating around 1,500 prisoners. Significantly, the state government had given an assurance to the High Court of completing the construction of Colvale jail by December 2010. But so far no significant progress has been made. The progress of the work clearly indicates that the jail would not be ready as per the schedule. The government should look at construction of the jail as part of jail reforms. Little doubt, while jail reforms needs a paradigm shift in managing the jails and prisoners, the prison management should be humane and reformative; different from the centres of corruption and cruelty they are now. Simply introducing video conference is not sufficient. Jail authorities are simply doing cosmetic reforms to prison management. In fact prison management needs a basic reform. The government should undertake issues that need top priority: speedy trial to check overcrowding and boosting the morale of prison officials which often leads to corruption in prisoner management.