Strategic Design Interventions for Severe Degree Criminals in Correction Homes

The intent of this project is to develop strategies for bringing about impactful changes in the lives of inmates that are serving a period of 14+ years for condemning severe degree crimes at Dausa jail, Rajasthan, India.
A sample size of volunteering forty inmates (associated as weavers with Jaipur Rugs for ‘Freedom Manchacha’) is being studied over a period of six months i.e. 16th Nov 2022 – 16th May 2023.
The idea behind this project is to identify their latent needs, understand their current psychological state, needs & wants, feelings and emotions, inhibitions and future aspirations. Since, the inmates are already skilled the aim of this project focuses on upskilling and enabling them to understand design elements, principles, art of storytelling, therapies, etc through workshops organised during the six months span.
The project is a multi-layered, deeply rooted, and various experts guided approach to help reintegrate these inmates become better versions of themselves and apply the learnings to their craft of rug making for Jaipur Rugs and in their lives beyond prison. I see this as an opportunity, to understand the deviants of our society, identify the complexities, simulate the methodologies, and thereby propose strategic interventions for holistic betterment of the individuals as well as the society.

Outcomes

1. A customised ‘Design Process’ that helps to facilitate design thinking. Application of this ‘Design process’ would be helpful not just to the inmates but also the non-design community.

2. Empower Decision making abilities of the inmates and help develop a sense of confidence resulting in qualitative decisions/work and upskilling of the inmates. This subtle shift will also help in elevating their plane of consciousness with time.

3. A ‘Research Paper’ with intensive study on various parameters with the sample size.

4. Develop ‘Collaborative rugs’ to validate the research and SEL mapping.

5. The ‘Re-integration’ approach taken through this research at Dausa Jail is novice in nature and challenging to the existing reformative techniques used until now thereby, application of the ‘Re-integration system developed by Jaipur Rugs’ will help bring about a transformative change in the lives of many prison inmates.

6. This project will help the inmates to find purpose for their life beyond prison which will help in curbing the recidivism rate of the country.