According to a notification issued by the state home department on Monday, the newly created posts include two senior superintendents, 14 superintendents, 13 assistant jailors, 27 sub-assistant jailers, 31 chief warders and 219 warders. The posts have been created for seven circle jails, 14 district jails and six special jails.
The creation of the new posts came a week after the government upgraded 16 jails as part of a comprehensive restructuring of the prison system in the state. Two district jails — Angul and Phulbani — were upgraded to circle jails. Ten sub-jails were upgraded into district prisons and two special sub-jails, one model convict prison and another sub-jail were upgraded to special jails.
“We gave a proposal to the state government, requesting creation of 1500 posts over a period of next five years. In the first phase, the government has created 306 new posts, which is the single largest creation of posts for prison cadre. The new posts and upgradation of jails would lead to better jail administration, welfare of inmates, transparency and efficiency in work,” director general (prisons) Manoj Chhabra told TOI.
Under a modernisation scheme, the prisons directorate is also planning to introduce biometric technology, such as fingerprint or facial recognition, to accurately track the movement of inmates in jails. The technology is also being planned for use by inmates in jail canteens.
“Currently, our personnel manually check whether each inmate enters his or her allotted ward. Under the modernisation project, we will install turnstiles equipped with biometric scanners. Inmates will be granted access to their allotted wards only after their biometric authentication. An inmate of one ward cannot enter another ward as the technology will deny access to him/her,” Chhabra said.
The same technology will also be used in jail canteens when the inmates purchase food and other essential commodities. At present, inmates receive small amounts of cash from their family members or relatives to make necessary purchases in jail canteens.
According to the jail manual, the inmates would deposit the cash with jail authorities, who, in return, provide coupons or tokens of the same amount to the prisoners. The inmates have been using the coupons to purchase eatables and other commodities from jail canteens.