IT in Prisons

IT Activity in Jail Department, Government of Rajasthan

Initiative towards Jail Reforms:

In June, 2008 Shri C. K. Mathew Principal Secretary, IT, Government of Rajasthan has given task to do computerization at eight central Jails & Jail Headquarters to NIC, Rajasthan state centre. In the first phase of computerization project following activities are included :-

1. Procurement of Hardware at Jail Headquarters and Eight Central Jails.

2. Procurement of System Software at Jail Headquarters.

3. Design & Development & customization and Deployment of software applications of Prison Management System (Prison Inmates Information System) and Visitor Management System (VMS)

4. Establish Local Area Network at Jail Headquarters and eight central Jails.

5. Awareness, operational and specific Software training/workshop Programme to the officers/staff deputed at Jail Headquarters and eight central Jails.

6. Deployment team of two Data Entry Operators in eight central Jails for data entry and Assistant Programmer

What NIC, Rajasthan Done:

The Computer based system have developed by NIC for Central Jails of Rajasthan. The following two softwares is identified:-

Prison Inmates Information Management System (PIIS)

The PIIS system helps in managing all the processes related to the prisoners. The system is aimed to provide real time information about prisoners to prison officials. The PIIS system provides an efficient mechanism to deal with various challenges faced by the prison authorities in handling prisons on day–to-day basis.

PMS system played following key role :-

  • The system facilitates to admissions of prisoner with medical details, recording of photo, warrant, finger print, court cases, court action, appeal, ward/barrack allocation, articles issued to prisoner, work assigned to prisoner, crime in jail, remission, parole, punishment, property, release of prisoner, auto calculation of release, Guard Form, Challan Register, Jail Gate modules, powerful queries and more than hundred types of reports and Periodical review Reports built in the software.

  • Admit the new prisoner after duplicity search of a prisoner. It captures prisoner’s photograph and stores it in the database which is of 2.5kb only.

  • Captures Medical Examination and Illness Record of prison inmates, personal belongings deposited by prisoner & items issued, lodging details of prisoner as allotted by the jail authority.

  • Captures Warrant, Court Cases’ Details, actions taken by the authorities and details of appeal made by the prisoner to the courts.

  • Keeps track of all movements of all the prisoners outside the jail.

  • Captures sentence period, judicial & police custody periods, sentence type for convict prisoners.

  • Recording of promotion of convicted prisoners into jail management assistance ranks, labour details & work assigned to a prisoner, parole, remission, interview prohibition, death of prisoner in jail, offence committed by a prisoner in the Jail

  • Powerful query based on general information, movement details, court cases, offence, police station, district, state, country, IPC wise details

  • Recording of release of prisoners from the jails as per the court orders / Government orders.

  • Exhaustive range of reports for effective Administrative Management and Decision making.

Result of PIIS: The PIIS software installed at all eight central Jails and data entry is progress deputed by hired manpower and till now total 50845 entries keyed on 31.12.2009. The system is functional more than six months at all eight central Jail, Rajasthan. The beneficiary of this system is Jail department, police department, Court, Human right commission, Crime Record Bureau, State Assembly etc.

Visitor Management System (VMS)

The VMS system is designed for efficient management and monitoring of visitors who wish to meet the jail inmates. The system facilitates collection and retrieval of relevant data along with the photographs of visitors and is integrated with the workflow for real time collection of information.

The system generates meeting slips with visitor’s photographs printed on them and maintains record of all visits of all visitors. The system is fully functional at all central jails.

Result of VMS:The system played following key role :-

  • Facility for registration of prior appointment of visitors with the inmates

  • Validity of MULAKAT/generation of meeting slip within one minute as per prisoner category

  • Facility to warn if visitor (if visitor was prisoner) want to do MULAKAT (if Visitor name, father name & spouse name match with prisoner’s data)

  • Weed out the visitor with a suspected background

  • Mulakat within 2-3 minute with prisoner

  • Recording of photos of all visitors

  • User accountability

  • Visitor analysis

  • It is Government to Citizen E-Governance tool.


One day Workshop Inaugurated by DG Prison on11 th December 2008, Jaipur

Type of Project G2G, G2C
Date of Launching July,2008
Impact of the project Wide usage of the data by 8 Central Jails & Prison Headquarter,Jail Department, Govt. of Rajasthan Departments.
Operating Environment At Server Side Windows OS 2003 with SQL-2005 database, At client side Windows XP & Client Server Technology.
No.of Users Jail Head Quarter, Jaipur & 8 Central Jails (Jaipur, Ajmer, Jodhpur, Bharatpur, Kota, Udaipur, Bikaner, Shriganganagar & Jodhpur) & court, police, NHRC, SCRB
No. Of Records 28000 records from Central Jails
Implementing Agency NICSI Rajasthan
Project Coordinator Mr. Tarun Toshniwal, STD
Asst. Project Coordinators Mr. Gurdeep Singh Bhatia, PSA
Mr. Arvind Kumar Sharma, SSA


One Day Workshop organized for Superintendents of Jails on11th December 2008 at Jaipur