Prisons in India are marked by overcrowding, underfunding, caste and class bias, gender invisibility, and a persistent culture of violence and neglect. Most incarcerated people are undertrials, many are first-time offenders, and a disproportionate number come from historically marginalised communities.

Our practice is driven by the idea that legal reform cannot end at sentencing. Through deep research, rights-based engagement, and cross-sectoral collaboration, we work to develop frameworks for prison administration that foreground accountability, rehabilitation, and prisoner welfare. We advocate for reforms that align with constitutional values and international human rights standards, moving beyond custodial logic toward a restorative approach to justice.

We conduct extensive field research in prisons, correctional homes, and detention centres—engaging with incarcerated individuals, prison officials, medical staff, and family members. These insights inform our policy recommendations on critical issues such as health care in custody, access to legal aid, prison nutrition, mental health support, grievance redressal, educational and vocational training, and reintegration after release.

Our frameworks are not theoretical—they are grounded in the lived experience of those within carceral spaces. We produce actionable policy briefs, implementation guidelines, and model rules that can be adopted by state prison departments, judicial bodies, and oversight mechanisms. We also support the drafting of affidavits and reports in prison-related litigation, bringing research directly into legal processes.

We pay particular attention to invisible and over-penalised populations within prisons—such as women, gender minorities, persons with mental illness, the elderly, Dalits and Adivasis, and foreign nationals. Our policy work highlights the specific vulnerabilities they face and proposes interventions tailored to their safety, dignity, and rights. We also advocate for the rights of children of incarcerated parents, especially women prisoners with young dependents.

At the heart of our prison reform work is the question of what justice looks like behind bars. We work to ensure that incarceration does not become a site of civil death. This includes pushing for independent monitoring bodies, digitisation of prison records, training modules for prison staff, transparent parole systems, and mechanisms for participatory governance within prisons.

We also collaborate with government bodies, legal services authorities, academic institutions, and civil society organisations to ensure that prison reform is not siloed—but part of broader conversations around criminal justice, public health, social equity, and governance. Our aim is to build systems that view incarcerated persons not as liabilities, but as rights-bearing individuals entitled to protection, dignity, and possibility.

Through this work, we are not simply advocating for better prisons—we are questioning the carceral logic itself. We believe that true justice must ask not just who deserves punishment, but what society owes to those it imprisons. In every policy draft, consultation, and reform blueprint, we uphold this principle: that the measure of a just society lies in how it treats those it chooses to confine.