Rajasthan Prison Visiting System - A Study on Role Perception and Role Knowledge of Non-Official Visitors (2011)

Prisons have always been closed institutions with many historical attempts to open them up, from being institutions of restraint and state vengeance to institutions for reformation. With their fortified physical structure and age old rules of management of punishment, prisons have been groomed as places of low visibility where inhumane conditions of neglect, abuse and torture prevail while the world remains ignorant of it. In order to prevent this, the state itself set up several supervisory mechanisms. The Prison Visiting System is one such mechanism by which people from community outside the prisons can be appointed by the government to enter the prison space and monitor the human rights situations inside.