Restoring Rights, Reforming Lives
Rights of Incarcerated Persons and Penal Reforms
Our work on prisoners’ rights is guided by a simple but radical belief: no one loses their humanity at the prison gate. We advocate for a carceral system rooted in dignity, rehabilitation, and accountability—one that recognises that justice does not end with conviction, and rights do not stop at incarceration
Dignity Doesn’t End at Incarceration
The conditions inside prisons are not accidental—they are the result of deeply embedded legal apathy, structural violence, and punitive policy design. Our practice is committed to dismantling these conditions through rights-based litigation, constitutional challenges, and direct engagement with carceral institutions. We treat incarceration not as an end point, but as a legal and moral battleground where the fight for justice continues, often more urgently than ever.
We work with individuals who are incarcerated—undertrials, convicts, and detainees—across a range of issues including denial of bail, custodial violence, solitary confinement, lack of access to healthcare, inhumane prison conditions, and denial of parole or remission. Each case is approached not just as a violation of rights, but as an opportunity to push for institutional reform and cultural change within the criminal justice system.
Our work also extends to those rendered invisible in carceral spaces: women, gender minorities, juveniles, the mentally ill, and the elderly. These groups face layered forms of neglect and abuse in custody, from lack of menstrual health and mental healthcare to sexual violence and structural isolation.
We actively challenge the systemic use of incarceration as a default response to poverty, caste, disability, and social non-conformity. Through PILs and constitutional litigation, we confront issues such as overcrowding, delayed trials, and the non-implementation of Supreme Court guidelines on prisoner rights. Our legal interventions seek not only individual relief, but durable policy change—whether it is pushing for grievance redressal mechanisms inside prisons or ensuring transparency in parole and furlough decisions.
For us, penal reform is not just about better facilities—it is about reimagining what justice looks like after conviction. We advocate for rehabilitative, community-based alternatives to incarceration, and fight for the right to education, employment, and reintegration support for prisoners. Our aim is not simply to improve prison life, but to restore the idea that incarcerated people remain full bearers of rights, worthy of care, protection, and voice.
We remain deeply invested in amplifying the voices of the incarcerated—through courtrooms, policy spaces, and public discourse. Whether through legal challenges against custodial deaths, or research that exposes the quiet cruelties of everyday prison life, we work to make the invisible visible, and the forgotten heard. In every filing, visit, and representation, we reaffirm a commitment that no one is beyond justice—and no system is beyond scrutiny.