Inmates in WB sell food, handicrafts outside jail gates

FROM PRISON CELLS TO STALLS

- PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

Every afternoon, the aroma of potato fritters and cutlets wafts through the air outside the tall walls of the Alipore Women’s Correctional Home in Kolkata.

Passersby stop to buy snacks, unaware that the women frying and packing the food are inmates still serving sentences.

For these women inmates, the small stall just outside the jail gate is more than a workplace; it’s a bridge between confinement and community.

It offers them a chance to rediscover themselves, interact with the outside world, and regain dignity often lost in isolation.

They are part of ‘Abhinno’ (Integrated), an innovative initiative launched in July by the West Bengal Correctional Services Department to help inmates earn livelihoods and rebuild confidence while in prison.

Under the programme, prisoners prepare and sell food, handicrafts, and other goods prepared by them directly to the public from stalls located outside correctional home entrances, a move officials describe as “rehabilitation with dignity”.

West Bengal Correctional Services Minister Chandranath Sinha said “Abhinno” is setting anew benchmark in prison reform.

“The products made by inmates are sold through these outlets outside jail premises. An NGO trains them, and the earnings go into the prisoners’ welfare fund. The inmates also get wages, which are handed over after release,” Sinha told PTI.