Jail inmates in Bangalore to have phone facilities soon

Inmates of the Central Jail in Bangalore will soon have access to telephone facility.

Revealing this to reporters in Bangalore, Karnataka’s Minister for Home M P Prakash said the Government had decided to set up eight telephone booths inside the Central Jail premises at Parappana Agrahara in Bangalore that will facilitate the inmates to receive only incoming calls.

“All the calls will be monitored and recorded. A warden will man each booth. The calls will not be allowed to last longer than two minutes”, Prakash said.

The telephone facility at the Central Jail in Bangalore will be started on an experimental basis. Based on the feedback, the Government will decide on extending the facility to other jails in the State.

“The facility is to help inmates keep in touch with their families. Though there is a proposal to even allow inmates to make restricted outgoing calls, it will be some time before a final decision is taken”, he said.

The telephone facility at the Central Jail, which has been taken up as a prison reform process, will be costing about Rs 228,000. A metal cabinet will be installed for each telephone booth to facilitate the monitoring and recording process. Public sector telecommunication giant Bharath Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and Airtel, a private telecommunication company, had been approached to set up the telephone kiosks, Prakash added.