Rights of Prisoners in Bangladesh

Prisoners’ rights have become one of the significant issues throughout the world. Prisoners should not be deprived of any right that does not exceed the necessities to confine them securely for their punishment. It is to be noted that the goal of imprisonment is to make an offender a non-offender. This book sheds light on the radical changing of the approach towards punishment and its objectives and on the adaptation of different theories in the prison system. Among all the theories, reformative and preventive theories portray punishment from a human rights perspective. Reformative theory dominates other theories, and it is reflected in various international standards emerged from different international instruments. This book as a research work examines the existing legal framework of Bangladesh relating to the rights of the prisoners in line with the international standards and assesses how far these laws have met their objectives. Besides mentioning different obligations and regulations, the present study briefly covers different rights of the prisoners and various aspects with the intent to establish how these are valuable and why they should be continually implemented. This research focuses on the transformation of the prisons of Bangladesh into correction centers and different approaches of prisons towards rehabilitation, reformation, and reintegration of the prisoners as well as ensuring their rights. The study highlights the real condition of the prisons and prisoners, and it also examines whether there are gaps between the law and practice. It explores what inadequacies exist in the prisons of Bangladesh and what measures can be taken to improve the conditions. It is basically qualitative research using analytical, empirical, and triangulation methods. A multitude of studies and sources were researched and used to provide the data and information and to draw the conclusion in a narrative and descriptive form where the strategy of this research is to view the rights of the prisoners from the human rights approach. The study has come up with a number of significant findings. Though there are a lot of significant and useful provisions in the prison laws, this study finds that overall the existing prison laws do not reflect the rights of the prisoners in all aspects compared to international standards; besides, the implementation of those laws is not supportive of realizing the reformative objectives of imprisonment. The research precisely reveals that miserable conditions still prevail in almost all the prisons in Bangladesh and the prisoners are deprived of many of their rights in the prisons. Many irregularities are present in the prison sector, and it also does not provide proper strategies for the reformation, rehabilitation, or reintegration of the prisoners. Moreover, the activities and corruption of the prison sector as well as the questionable role of the whole criminal justice system are causing hindrance to the enforcement of prisoners’ rights. This book explores what has yet to be done and what should be done to ensure the prisoners’ rights and for the improvement of prison sectors, and it also gives some suggestions with such yardsticks.