Bengal government urges corporates to adopt prisoner families

To help families of prisoners live a stigma-free life, the West Bengal government today urged corporate houses to adopt such families.
"The families of inmates live like untouchables in society. They suffer from social stigma because of what someone in their family did. We want the corporates to come forward and adopt some such families," state Minister for Correctional Administration Haider Aziz Safwi said.
During a session on "empowering the prisoners" at MCC Chamber of Commerce, he said that corporate funding could be used in rehabilitating families of prisoners who are abandoned by society.
"They can be given education, training, jobs, etc with corporate sponsorship. Besides this, ex-prisoners and their families can also be rehabilitated," the minister said.

He also pointed out that most prisoners living in correctional homes suffer from depression.
"This is the reason for some of them committing suicides. We need some mental rehabilitation process from them," Safwi said.

Adhir Sharma, ADG and Inspector General of Correctional Services, said many NGOs were running vocational courses for the inmates.
"But I am afraid that many of the inmates will not be employable once they are out," he said.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau data, out of 385,135 inmates, 52,228 of them have been trained in India under various vocational training programmes in 2012.
West Bengal had 164 trained inmates in 2012.

Altogether, goods worth Rs 128 crore were produced and sold by jail inmates all over the country.