A tasty recipe for prison reform: Too many crooks don't spoil the broth at Kerala jails

Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado proclaimed that his object all sublime was to make the punishment fit the crime. Now, the authorities of a prison in Kerala are giving a new twist to ‘doing porridge’, the British slang term for serving a jail sentence, by getting model inmates to turn to cookery instead of crookery.

Though it is not known if porridge, or any other form of oatmeal, is on the menu, in what some might deem to be a kitchen-sink drama, a number of convicts have been encouraged by their galoers to open a canteen, under the logo ‘Food for Freedom’, which is open to all walk-in customers and not reserved only for those who are currently non-paying guests of the government.

The prisoners, who have reportedly responded with zest to the scheme that makes their durance not quite so vile, are cooking up a storm with their bill of fare selling with all the alacrity ascribed to hot cakes.


Indeed, so successful has the project been that several eateries in the vicinity have had to shut shop for lack of customers, thanks to what the owners of these outlets could describe as cutpurse, if not cut-throat, competition.

So, given the right rehabilitative recipe, if these inmates can, literally and otherwise, be induced to become fed up with felony, the Kerala model could serve as a template for penal reform and provide criminologists something to chew over by way of food for tort.