37. Classifying - to use a better word, typecasting convicts, through guidelines which are inflexible, based on their crime committed in the distant past can result in the real danger of overlooking the reformative potential of each individual convict. Grouping types of convicts, based on the offences they were found to have committed, as a starting point, may be justified. However, the prison laws in India – read with Articles 72 and 161 - encapsulate a strong underlying reformative purpose. The practical impact of a guideline, which bars consideration of a premature release request by a convict who has served over 20 or 25 years, based entirely on the nature of crime committed in the distant past, would be to crush the life force out of such individual, altogether. Thus, for instance, a 19 or 20 year old individual convicted for a crime, which finds place in the list which bars premature release, altogether, would mean that such person would never see freedom, and would die within the prison walls. There is a peculiarity of continuing to imprison one who committed a crime years earlier who might well have changed totally since that time. This is the condition of many people serving very long sentences. They may have killed someone (or done something much less serious, such as commit a narcotic drug related offences or be serving a life sentence for other nonviolent crimes) as young individuals and remain incarcerated 20 or more years later. Regardless of the morality of continued
