NAGPUR, Dec. 14 -- The state home department on Saturday tabled a bill in the legislative assembly outlining prison reforms and correctional services-the Maharashtra Prisons and Correctional Services Act 2025 which underlines facilities for inmates, including their food, work, wages, healthcare facilities and welfare funds. It also focuses on the use of technology and contingency plans for the prisons. Based on the Model Prison Bill 2023 forwarded by the central government to all states, the bill aims to holistically address issues related to prison administration, keeping contemporary needs and correctional ideology in mind. Replacing pre-independence archaic laws, the bill provides for categories for prisons, categories of prisoners, the constitution of a prison force, a welfare fund for all officers, staff and inmates, streamlining furlough and parole conditions, special provisions related to women prisoners and rehabilitation of needy prisoners. The prison categories include a Central Prison with a capacity of 800 and more inmates, District Prisons Class 1, Class 2 and Class 3 with increasingly lesser capacities, a special prison for those transferred on disciplinary grounds who have no privilege of furlough, a women's prison, a temporary prison for detention for a specific period, an open colony where prisoners will be allowed to live with their families and a Borstal institution for young offenders. The reforms also classify prisoners as civil prisoners, undertrials, detenus, old and infirm prisoners and first-time offenders among others, and have a provision to lodge them separately. The bill mandates the separate lodging of women prisoners with a separate entrance, and a separate ward in the prison hospital. "Transgender prisoners, both transmen and transwomen, should be provided with separate enclosures or wards," it states. "Similarly, women prisoners may keep their children with them inside the prison until they turn six. Any complaint or information of sexual harassment of a women should be acted upon without delay." Some of the other provisions include one for admission and repatriation of foreign prisoners, discipline in the prison and prescribed punishments for violations. Mobile phones or other electronic devices are banned and their use can result in imprisonment of up to three years and a fine up to Rs 25,000....