A pilot project to store records of all prisoners in state jails in an easy-to-access digital form, rather than the cumbersome task of entering the data in 40 different registers as it’s done now, has kicked off at Mumbai’s Arthur Road Prison and Byculla Jail.

Soon, records of all inmates, be it personal or case-related, will be available at the click of a mouse.

The project aims at minimising paper work and avoiding prisoners having same names being mistaken for another. There have been instances of wrong prisoners being produced in courts or taken to hospitals across the state because of a confusion due to same names, jail officials said.

The state home department has allotted Rs 80 lakh for each prison for the project, to be carried out in phases.

Records of Arthur Road and Byculla jail prisoners are being taken up in the first phase. The second phase will cover Thane and Kalyan prisons.

Arthur Road Jail superintendent Rajendra Dhamne said, “A server has been installed on the prison premises. A jail official acquainted with computer operations will be assigned the job to manually feed all details in the computer. The records thus stored will be a complete dossier on the inmate, right from the date of his entry till he leaves on bail or is convicted or acquitted or sent to another prison,” he said.

According to the jail manual, prison officials have to enter details of each inmate in 40 different books. These books will now become redundant. Dhamne said, “I welcome the digital method as it’s less hectic and data is easily accessible. Now, when a court or any senior official seeks any information on a prisoner, I won’t have to seek time but can just take updated printouts and submit them,” he said.

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