Representational image. PHOTO: REUTERS

ISLAMABAD: The prison system in the country to say the least is in an abysmal state with packed cells ,inadequate health and sanitation facilities , limited resources and improper visiting facilities.



However, that is all about to change as the country’s first model prison with state-of- the-art facilities is being constructed in the federal capital’s H/16 area.



In what is a first, separate rooms for conjugal visits will be available for inmates at the prison which authorities claim will be a correction facility rather than a traditional jail.



The prison facility will have proper conjugal quarters allowing prisoners to meet their spouses in seclusion and exercise their conjugal rights. The federal government has approved Rs8 million for this project.



For the construction of model prison in Islamabad Rs700 million more have been proposed in Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) for the fiscal year 2018-19.



The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) in July 2016 had approved construction of the jail at Sector H-16 with an estimated cost of Rs3.928 billion. Expenditure on it up to June 30, 2017 stood at Rs1 billion. The throw forward (remaining requirement) as on July 1st, 2017 stood at Rs2.928 billion.



Federal Minister for Interior, Ahsan Iqbal on February 22 this year performed the groundbreaking ceremony of the model jail 16 which aims to act as a correction centre for the prisoners.



The penitentiary will have four special courtrooms, an IT lab and educational facilities besides visitor rooms, investigation rooms, as well as rooms for conjugal visits. Unlike other jails in and around the country, they will have separate sections for housing undertrial inmates.



This will be a correctional facility that reforms the inmates’ character as they serve their sentences out so they can be better citizens to the society when they get out.



Due to the crime network present inside prisons, most inmates come out of as hardened criminals. Hence, this project has been named as the Islamabad Model Prison Correctional Centre and will be completed by the end of 2019. According to sources inside the interior ministry, 1,500 inmates are taken to the court from Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail on a daily basis, wasting resources and time, as well as being a risk at the same time.



Spread over 90 acres in Sector H-16, the Islamabad Model Prison is estimated to cost the taxpayers Rs3.9 billion to lock up around 2,000 inmates.



While construction work on the facility was launched in February, the authorities have yet to actually acquire the land to build an access road for the jail from the Kashmir Highway and officials dug up a mud track through the fields on an emergency basis for Ahsan Iqbal’s ceremony.



Iqbal was told that locals are in the process of building homes on land meant to be used as for the access road since Capital Development Authority (CDA) had yet to acquire the land.



For reasons best known to the interior minister, he wants the VIP jail construction complete by 2019.



Despite the fact that the capital was built over 50 years ago with its own police force and judicial system, it does not have a central prison. Instead, thousands of prisoners of Islamabad — whether sentenced or under trial —are kept in Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail and sometimes in other jails of Punjab.



Published in The Express Tribune, May 20th, 2018.