CJI Suryakant in Gurugram: CJI ने हरियाणा की जेलों में कैदियों के लिए स्किल डेवलपमेंट सेंटर, पॉलिटेक्निक डिप्लोमा कोर्स, ITI-लेवल के वोकेशनल प्रोग्राम शुरू किए.
00:00Justice does not end with punishment, it evolves through renewal.
00:08And a renewal becomes possible only when society is prepared to see individuals not through
00:15the narrow lens of what they once did but through the wider horizon of what they may
00:23yet become.
00:25As we gather this evening to reflect on correctional justice, let this understanding be our foundation.
00:36We know that through the entire globe, whether it is Europe, East Asia, Africa or Latin America,
00:44all have steadily moved away from the impulse of an eye-for-eye theory and that school of
00:50thought is enormously followed in the Indian criminal justice system also, where we undoubtedly
00:57believe in reformatory and not retributive approach.
01:03My own judicial philosophy has long aligned with the global and domestic India.
01:10I have never assumed that fear creates better citizens or that a person's identity can be
01:20permanently tethered and remembering or identify him the worst moment which he had undergone in
01:33the past.
01:34rather I always believe that human beings flourish through dignity, through opportunity and
01:44through liberty.
01:46If anything, my ears on the bench have only strengthened my conviction that people are not born malicious.
01:55Instead, there are circumstances, deprivation, trauma and structural inequities often shape women
02:05conduct long before a courtroom enters the picture.
02:09I have therefore tried to hold a firm balance between individual rights and the demands of criminal justice system, a balance that
02:21is the foundation of meaningful rehabilitation.
02:26I can tell you from my experience that this equilibrium is tricky to achieve and even more difficult to maintain.
02:36I vividly recollect that was probably in 2014 or 2015 when Chief Justice John Roberts in US penned
02:49down the judgment on decrowding of the prisons in California.
02:56There were time bound directions and at that time I was struggling hard as a high court judge
03:01in writing by judgment in Jasveer Singh's case where eventually I granted conjugal rights to the jail inmates.
03:12I had an occasion to meet with Chief Justice Roberts at that time and I found that Indian jurisprudence
03:22in terms of jail reforms, in terms of the enforcement of the permissible or conditional human rights or fundamental rights is far ahead as compared to various global jurisprudences.
03:40We understand that reformative justice is not only desirable but it is urgent.
03:48While Indian prisons have largely shed the yoke of its dark colonial legacy, much and more remains
03:55to be done if we are to lead by example.
03:59This is especially because we find ourselves in a rapidly changing world.
04:06The society to which inmates return today has changed dramatically.
04:12Individual support structure has weakened, families are smaller, communities are fragmented and migration has created populations with no stable network to fall back upon.
04:26When individuals step out of prison into such an environment, ladies and gentlemen, reintegration becomes not just challenging but precarious.
04:41Without support, many are drawn again into cycles of marginalization and conflict with law.
04:49Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of poor migrant laborers, men and women who enter our cities with little more than a hope.
05:01When they are caught in legal entanglements, they face barriers that others do not.
05:08They lack sureties, lack documentation, lack linguistic familiarity and often lack even the basic access needed to navigate local courts.
05:23When they are vulnerable and vulnerable and marginalized victims and the weight of past hardship converts on them, they create conditions in which the justice system must do more than merely contain.
05:42Without educational skills, psychological support and structured reintegration, a prison, to whom I prefer to call as correctional home, can easily become a place with disadvantages, defense and custody becomes cyclical.
06:03That is why please remember what Nelson Mandela said, one cannot truly know a nation until one has seen its jails.
06:16If prisons reveal who are we as a society, then they must reflect not only discipline but dignity, not only order but opportunity.
06:29In other sense, what happens within these walls must consciously differ from the circumstances that may have led someone here in the first place.
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