A murder convict in Gurgaon’s Bhondsi jail has developed a complex software for tracking and managing staff in a prison that houses about 50 gangsters from Haryana and the National Capital Region, including Delhi.

Managing the shifts and keeping a track of the employees working in a jail is a tough task. He along with some other inmates, designed a Prison management tool which simplified the overly complex task of managing a prison.

A 36-year-old convict who was a Chartered Accountant by profession. Rohit is serving a life sentence in the Gurgaon jail for killing his wife. He was working with a private firm as a software engineer at the time.

STAMP Software:

The software is called STAMP – Staff Tracking And Accountability Management Program and at the moment it keeps track of all the employees of Bhondsi Jail. STAMP also helps to generate staff reports and location history at a single click.

When he was put behind bars as an under-trial in June 2013, he was just another name in the long list of inmates in Bhondsi jail. But now he is an asset to the jail. The software has now been adopted across all jails in the state.

“It took four months to design and develop the software and we worked continuously for around 8-9 hours a day to complete the task and finally in February this software was put on trial in Bhondsi jail,” 36-year-old Pagare said.

“It was not easy for me as being a chartered accountant, I had very less knowledge about developing software. I took it as a challenge and wanted to do something creative being in the prison. So I learned and spent more than 12 hours initially to learn and work on the project,” he added.

Officials said the Pagare’s software has improved their efficiency by 10-15% during the six-month trial period. Harinder Singh, who is the superintendent of the jail said: “We ran the software as a pilot and found it extremely useful in augmenting security and improving staff efficiency. By the end of June 2017, we plan to implement this software in all prisons of Haryana.”

“For the first three months, I was depressed. The then jail superintendent, Harinder Singh, asked me to utilize my potential and do something good. That’s how it all began,” recalled Mishra. “Fingerprints of all undertrials and convicts were collected. This helped authorities to record and maintain accounts of money deposited in the name of a particular inmate, track his criminal record, the status of the trail, dates and also the number of times he has been hospitalized,” Mishra said.

“At present, I have 10 ex-prisoners working on the software. After all, they understand the system’s problems best. I incorporated their feedback/suggestions to reality. To ensure smooth transition to Phoenix, we trained 350 warders and inmates on basic data entry to complex issues,” said Mishra.

This software enables the administrators to keep an easy track of their employees, their locations as well as their attendances.