Design And Implementation Of An Online Prison Management System

INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Management of prisons in Nigeria has long been a neglected area which has recently
been incorporated in the e-governance program of Government of Nigeria. Currently a
rudimentary process of storing all the prisoner data in manual files and registers is in
place. The Prison Management System project will integrate all the prisoner data into
a single integrated system which will in turn result all the information being present in
a digital format.
ICT in prisons was initiated in the year 2002 at Delhi Prisons, Tihar. The Tihar Prisons
Complex in New Delhi is the biggest prison complex in Asia comprising of 9 prisons and
one District Jail at Rohini with a total strength of more than 11,000 prisoners against a
normal sanctioned capacity of 6250 prisoners. In a year about 70,000 – 80,000 inmates
remain lodged in these prisons for different duration and crimes committed by them.
This prison population has about 80% under trials and includes about 480 women
inmates. About 400 inmates are foreigners from different parts of the world. Many high
security criminals also live here. There has been a substantial increase in number of
prison inmates coming to Tihar because of a phenomenal increase in the crime scene
at Delhi that has resulted in the increase of the ICT needs and its management at the
Tihar Jail Complex.
Nearly 1700-1800 visitors meet their relative inmates’ everyday. There was manual
system of booking (meetings) in each jail for its respective inmates. Centralised visitor
record was not available. There was lack of exchange of visitors’ information within jails
and prison headquarters. No provision for identification / detection / verification of
visitors was there.
Managing the prisoner record and monitoring of prisoner / visitor was always difficult
since most of the records were normally maintained manually, so the concerned
authorities were required to go through all the registers to find out the details and
status of the inmate as well as of the visitor.
In order to cope up with the increasing number of prisoners being lodged in, the Tihar
Administration required a re-engineering and rationalization of their key business
processes and functions of prisoners’ related information and their computerization in
order to speed up the processing of information need of courts and various other
national agencies.
As the technology evolution is taking place, there arose a need for centralization of
prisoner’s data to facilitate information exchange and data sharing to the users of the
prison. It shall reduce administrative overheads, speed up responsiveness to users,
reduce risks involved in inmate’s custody, eliminated obsolete processes and reap cost-
cutting benefits.

1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
Management of prison’s in Nigeria is still at a nascent stage and follows rudimentary
processes. Most of the prisons in Nigeria have a collection of manual files and registers
to store prisoner/criminal records. This is a very inefficient and cumbersome way of
storing records which greatly impedes the flow of critical information as well as makes
looking up of information time consuming. Also, different files and registers are
required to store the information which is relevant to a single prisoner. This hinders the
profiling process of prisoners.

1.3 OBJECTIVE OF THE PROJECT
The main purpose behind the implementation of the Prison Management System (PMS)
was to enhance the administrative capabilities of the jails in terms of monitoring and
security of the prison while improving the efficiency and productivity of the Prisons.
The main goals of the project are enunciated below:
 To ensure proper monitoring of the prisons by the top officials
 To ensure that the discipline and decorum of the jails is maintained by both the
employees and the prisoners
 To ensure that no impersonation of the prisoners happens by proper validation
and authentication of the prisoner’s identity
 To improve the productivity and efficiency of the prisons so as to facilitate the
usage of the available work force for sensitive work while leveraging technology
to reduce the mundane workload of the employees
 To ensure the availability of data in digital form for preservation, analysis and
reporting.

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROJECT
The nature of project is such that outcome of project could be quantitatively measured
only for few parameters such as
 Automatic detection of duplication
 Immediate generation of report on categorization of prisoners on basis of their
cases, period of confinement etc.
 Automatic calculation of Remission to be granted to a convict prisoner for good
behavior, discipline etc.
 Reduction in the cost (Saving of resources) of physical production of prisoners in
Courts.

1.5 SCOPE OF THE PROJECT
The basic purpose of this project is to develop an online system for prison management.
The system developed covers prisoner’s information such as picture, conviction,
offence, visitors, address, jail term record etc.

1.6 LIMITATIONS OF THE PROJECT
Generally, a study of this nature would have some constraints such as time, money and
data collection method. I wish to say that data collection method used has the
limitation of rigidity (people finding it difficult to respond to questions) thereby
restricting the information obtained.
Also lack of finance is another obstacle that hindered a wider consultations and
research on the project. Some materials may have some cost implications which may
be above the budgeted money for the research work.1.7 PROJECT REPORT ORGANIZATION
The project is organized as follows;-
Chapter one introduces the background of the project with the statement of the
problems, objectives of the project, its significance, scope, and constraints are pointed
out. Previous literatures on prison management information system were reviewed in
Chapter two. Chapter three discusses system Investigation and Analysis. It deals with
detailed investigation and analysis of the existing system and problem identification. It
also proposed for the new system. Chapter four covers the system design and
implementation. Chapter five was the summary and conclusion of the project.

1.8 DEFINITION OF TERMS
Data- This can be defined as facts about the organization and its business transaction.
Information- This can be defined as data that has been transformed and organized by
processing and purposeful intelligence.
Information system- This is an arrangement of people, data, processes and interface
that interact to support and improve day to day operation in a business as well as
support the problem solving and decision making needs for management and users.
Management: It is the co-ordination of all the resources of an organization through
the process of planning, organization, directing and controlling in order to attain
organizational objectives.