Prison Offences

In one line

Sixteen acts in section 45 are prison offences, and the last thing on the list is conspiring to commit any of the other fifteen.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: section 45 of the Prisons Act 1894 declares sixteen acts to be prison offences when committed by a prisoner. Section 59(1) empowers the State Government to make rules defining the acts that shall constitute prison offences, classifying them into serious and minor offences, fixing the punishments awardable for each class, and declaring the circumstances in which an act constituting both a prison offence and an offence under the general penal law may or may not be dealt with as a prison offence.

The sixteen, grouped

Do not learn them as a list of sixteen. Learn them as four groups, and the list comes back.

Disobedience and work, five of them.

• Wilful disobedience to a prison regulation which has been declared by rules under section 59 to be a prison offence.
• Wilfully disabling himself from labour.
• Contumaciously refusing to work.
• Wilful idleness or negligence at work by any prisoner sentenced to rigorous imprisonment.
• Wilful mismanagement of work by such a prisoner.

The last two apply only to prisoners sentenced to rigorous imprisonment, which follows from section 36: a prisoner not so sentenced may be punished for neglect of work only by an alteration in the scale of diet.

Violence and disorder, three.

• Any assault or use of criminal force.
• The use of insulting or threatening language.
• Immoral or indecent or disorderly behaviour.

Security, four.

• Filing, cutting, altering or removing handcuffs, fetters or bars without due authority.
• Receiving, possessing or transferring any prohibited article.
• Omitting or refusing to report, as soon as it comes to his knowledge, a fire, a plot or conspiracy, an escape, attempt or preparation to escape, or an attack or preparation for attack on a prisoner or a prison official.
• Conspiring to escape, or to assist in escaping, or to commit any other of the offences aforesaid.

Dishonesty inside the institution, four.

• Wilful damage to prison property.
• Tampering with or defacing history tickets, records or documents.
• Feigning illness.
• Wilfully bringing a false accusation against any officer or prisoner.

Three features of the list

The first offence is a delegation. Wilful disobedience is a prison offence only where the rules under section 59 have declared that particular regulation to be one. So the largest category of prison offence has its content supplied by State rules, and it differs between States.

Two of them are duties to inform. Omitting or refusing to report a fire, plot, escape or attack is an offence of omission, and it makes every prisoner an informant on pain of punishment. That is worth a comment: it is efficient for security and corrosive of the relations between prisoners, and a prisoner who reports is in obvious danger from those he reports.