Geisha Kow­lessar

He said the prin­ci­ples of sen­tenc­ing act­ed as a de­ter­rent to al­low the in­mate to re­flect on the crime com­mit­ted and to have a de­nun­ci­a­tion that it was wrong and for the vic­tim to re­ceive ret­ri­bu­tion. He said if that was not al­lowed, cou­pled with train­ing of rein­te­gra­tion in­to so­ci­ety, the crime cy­cle would per­pet­u­ate.

He added: "I am not say­ing to turn the pris­ons in­to the Hy­att but pris­on­ers should not be sleep­ing in the same place where they ex­crete. They should be do­ing some­thing bet­ter with their time. "Even­tu­al­ly those serv­ing a fixed sen­tence would have to come out and if they are not treat­ed with dig­ni­ty or not trained to be rein­te­grat­ed in­to so­ci­ety where is the crime prob­lem go­ing to be? " Khan asked.He main­tained that the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice was "to pun­ish but not to go on pun­ish­ing be­yond prin­ci­ples."

Make death penal­ty hu­mane

Call­ing for cer­tain pro­ce­dures to be im­ple­ment­ed re­gard­ing Death Row pris­on­ers Khan urged they must al­so be treat­ed with dig­ni­ty and care. The read­ing of the death war­rant, he said, must be a very solemn event. He said: "The en­tire thing must be very se­ri­ous be­cause it is your last meal, your last rites and you should be al­lowed a vis­it from a priest or re­li­gious rep­re­sen­ta­tive. All these I will be look­ing at. "I am not say­ing it is done ar­bi­trar­i­ly but we have we to look at the pro­ce­dure and en­sure it is go­ing to hap­pen be­cause if the Gov­ern­ment is bent on en­forc­ing the death penal­ty it should be made as hu­mane as pos­si­ble," Khan added.

Sub-par con­di­tions

Top on Khan's agen­da was tack­ling pris­ons con­di­tions across the board. Say­ing it was no se­cret that con­di­tions were a cause for con­cern, Khan added: "There have been sev­er­al lo­cal judg­ments dis­cussing whether these con­di­tions were un­con­sti­tu­tion­al. "Our courts have used such ad­jec­tives, as dis­tress­ing, ap­palling and sub-hu­man, and the Court of Ap­peal em­pha­sised that con­di­tions were com­plete­ly un­ac­cept­able in a civilised coun­try." Among the com­plaints from pris­on­ers, Khan list­ed, were over­crowd­ing, fae­ces-filled cells, de­nial of air­ing time, cells not cleaned of­ten, lim­it­ed prison vis­its and nu­mer­ous con­cerns re­lat­ing to food. Re­gard­ing the is­sue of over­crowd­ing, Khan said he, as pris­ons in­spec­tor, could not ad­dress it but could bring it to the at­ten­tion of the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties, in­clud­ing the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter.

Pris­ons re­view sys­tem

The pris­ons' re­view sys­tem, which dat­ed as far back as 1838, had sim­i­lar­i­ties as the pa­role sys­tem which was ex­pect­ed to be im­ple­ment­ed, he said. The re­view, Khan added, was so old that it was no longer print­ed by Gov­ern­ment. He said the sys­tem af­ford­ed re­view for any­one serv­ing a sen­tence longer than four years and it was opened to ju­di­cial re­view fol­low­ing rec­om­men­da­tions. He added: "Un­til the pa­role sys­tem comes in­to force the four=year re­view sys­tem is in the books and it is the law. "I have to speak to the Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er to de­ter­mine whether these re­views were be­ing con­duct­ed and what was the pro­ce­dure." Laud­ing the ide­al of a pa­role sys­tem, Khan said it sent pos­i­tive mes­sages to so­ci­ety that all was not lost.