In the foothills of the Western Ghats, thirty-five kilometres from Thiruvananthapuram, stands a prison that has produced only one repeat offender in six decades of operation. The men inside wake before dawn, tap rubber trees, tend cattle, earn wages credited to their own accounts, and return home for one month in every six. Their children attend the neighbourhood school. The facility earns two crore rupees a year for the Kerala government. It has no walls .
Nettukaltheri has been answering the central question of Indian penology since 1962. The answer is so clear, and so damning of everything else we do, that the only honest question remaining is why we have spent sixty years refusing to act on what we already know.
What open prisons do differently
An open correctional institution is defined by the absence of material precautions against escape — no walls, no locks, no bars, no armed guards. Its operation is based on self-discipline and the inmate’s sense of responsibility towards the community in which he lives . Unlike closed prisons that manufacture institutional dependence, open prisons do something radical: they trust the prisoner to earn that trust back.
The evidence is overwhelming. The Sanganer open-air camp in Rajasthan costs the State Rs 49.60 per prisoner per day. A closed prison costs Rs 333.12. That is one-seventh of the expenditure, with recidivism rates that are negligible by comparison . Prisoners do not escape despite the absence of walls, because escape means surrendering the earned liberty they have built for themselves. That proves a more powerful deterrent than any physical barrier .
The Yerawada model: Farming as rehabilitation
Maharashtra’s oldest open prison, established in 1956, owns over 250 acres of land. Nearly 100 acres are under cultivation — vegetables, grains, fruits, and fodder — while the remaining land is used for animal husbandry. Every day, the open prison supplies 400 to 700 kg of fresh vegetables to the overcrowded Yerawada Central Prison, sustaining over 6,000 inmates next door .
Inmates here are more than prisoners. They are farmers, poultry breeders, and craftsmen. They staff a printing press, a laundry service, a hairdressing salon, and even a restaurant fully designed, built, and managed by inmates. For their labour, they receive daily wages deposited into personal accounts — used for daily necessities, sent home to families, or saved for legal expenses. All accumulated savings are handed over upon release .
In Nellore, the semi-open prison operates on 45 acres of organic vegetable fields. Fresh produce harvested by prisoners is sold to the public at nearly 50 per cent lower than market rates. The prison also runs a dairy farm with over 60 cattle and generates daily revenue of Rs 5,000 to Rs 7,000 .
The human dimension: Sanganer’s women
In Rajasthan’s Sanganer open jail, women convicts live in a gated community with their families. Geeta Kesar, 43, convicted of killing her abusive husband, now works a stitching job for ₹6,000 a month. Her five-year-old son sleeps inside their one-room house adjacent to her flower garden .
For women in the criminal justice system, the struggle is particularly acute. Most are abandoned by their families at the onset of trials. Many are unlettered and have no one to interpret laws or help them understand their rights. The Sanganer prison, located strategically near cloth factories and residential complexes, allows women to find work and gradually reintegrate into society .
The jailer of Sanganer, Hemraj Vaishnav, says his approach to justice has changed. “After being here, I have realised it is not about punishment, but about a correction of life’s course,” he says .
Why the system remains underused
Despite decades of evidence, open prisons remain tragically underutilised. According to NCRB data, only 88 open jails existed across India as of December 2021 — 39 of them in Rajasthan alone. Only three states — Maharashtra, Kerala, and Rajasthan — have built capacity for female detainees .
The eligibility requirements vary by state but are often too subjective, based on good behaviour, type of offence, length of sentence, and security risk. Dangerous offenders are rarely moved, and some jurisdictions have unilaterally excluded women altogether. These rules have resulted in low occupancy rates .
The Justice Mulla Committee concluded that the most important consideration should be the suitability of the prisoner’s admission, not the nature of the crime or the length of the sentence .
A constitutional obligation, finally
On February 26, 2026, the Supreme Court delivered a landmark judgment in Suhas Chakma v. Union of India. The Court held that the State’s duty is not discharged by confinement alone — it is discharged only when confinement is oriented toward returning a person capable of living freely .
The directions are specific: mandatory expansion of Open Correctional Institutions across all states and union territories; inclusion of women prisoners currently excluded; and eligibility redesign focused on reform potential rather than time served. The Court has given a three-month deadline for states to act .
The constitutional doctrine draws on half a century of precedent: Francis Coralie Mullin read Article 21 to include the right to live with human dignity even while incarcerated. Rehabilitation is State obligation, not State generosity. A State that delivers people back more damaged than when it received them is not administering justice. It is, in the Court’s own phrasing, running correctional houses that cruelly ache the soul .
What still stands in the way
Thirty-five states and union territories still had no open correctional infrastructure when the judgment arrived. Prisoners cannot vote. Their families carry stigma. The bureaucratic instinct always favours the defensible custody of high walls over the accountable openness of a Sanganer — because when something goes wrong behind walls, the institution absorbs the blame. Every successful reintegration is a data point that appears nowhere in any minister’s political calculus .
The Suhas Chakma judgment has given constitutional obligation a deadline, a committee, and the Court’s explicit refusal to defer further. Whether it survives contact with the machinery that has absorbed every previous instruction is the only question that remains. The answer will say something precise and uncomfortable not only about the State, but about what we, as a society, are willing to accept in the name of justice.
