The Supreme Court Justice Surya Kant on Saturday in a lecture on Saturday ,talked about the life of Justice VR Krishna Iyer ,on his immense contributions to the jurisprudence of social justice, his idea of legal aid and his reforms on the prisoners rights.
Delivering a lecture on Justice Krishna lecture series organised by the Himachal Pradesh Law University Shimla here, Justice Surya Kant said that Justice Iyer was a pioneer in evolution of prison system as a mechanism of punishment and eventually, the contemporary context of prisons in the nature of reformative and corrective institutions.
He quoted Justice Iyer, who once said, “Inmates are the guests in prisons and jailors are the hosts”.
The Supreme Court had then come up with a great and novel system of prison administration which was called ‘break-up and weekend prison,’ in which the prison inmate could be permitted to move out of prison with some conditions off course,on weekdays but had to return
on weekends.This was not only a way to make the prisoners feel more human but to also let them be apart of the society.
Justice Iyer is said to have categorised inmates on the crime that they committed. He differentiated between crime caused by necessity and crimes that are caused by passion, along with having a category of white collared crimes.
This system could be applied to category and thus could help in making them better humans, the very purpose of law for punishment and turn them into what they are not.
The lecture series had another prominent person who spoke about the law luminary.
Justice Sabina ,the Acting Chief Justice of Himachal Pradesh, discussed about the jurisprudence related to prison rights and prison administration.
She also highlighted the need for reforms for making this system more humane in approach.
Justice Sabina also talked about the judicial activism, legislative actions, the rights of prisoners, the corrective measures to help the prisoners in long run of life.
The acting judge of Himachal High Court also discussed the need for approach change towards prisoners.
While delivering her address she praised the University for organising the programme along with congratulating the University for having organised the Pilot Lecture series which will be beneficial for all the students and an enriching experience for the faculty.
Another speaker who addressed the audience was Nishtha Jaswal,who talked about how Justice Iyer has played a pivotal role in development of jurisprudence in India.
She also talked about aspects like social justices and prison reforms which Justice Iyer has already given a go to and it’s our duty to take them further.
A long discussion was also held about the Humane judiciary approach that was propagated by the former justice Krishna Iyer and his influence on the current system of justice.