In 2025, the country is still engaged in political debate regarding bail reform, while jails and prisons swell with people who have not been found guilty of a crime. The NCRB declared it “overcrowding.” However, rights defenders saw something much broader, which was the institutionalization of inequality. For the world’s largest democracy, wealth as a means of obtaining freedom is possible, but liberty is now a luxury.

While the NCRB 2023 report did provide numbers/data, it did not diagnose the primary reason for so many Indians who were jailed prior to a trial taking place. It did not address or ask why the poor and the marginal are consistently at the top of these tables, or why, year after year, freedom is deferrable by caste, class, and faith.

The Undertrial Nation

According to data from the 2023 NCRB, Muslims make up 16.5% of the overall prison population, an overrepresentation that continues despite numerous demands that this be revisited. Two years later, there remain 16.5% of Muslim prisoners, but the politics surrounding that number has hardened.

Faith-based profiling is no longer the subject of accusations; it is a quiet cynically accepted, administrative process. Detentions under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the National Security Act (NSA) continue to be unevenly applied to Muslim men, particularly in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. However, the NCRB report for 2023 claims there is only one UAPA case in Maharashtra—even if the claim is absurd, there still continue to be ongoing prosecutions on UAPA grounds from Bhima Koregaon to the anti-CAA protests in Delhi.

The reasoning behind this invisibility was brutally exposed in Javed Ahmad Hajam v. State of Maharashtra. Hajam, a college professor from Kolhapur, posted two WhatsApp status updates in August 2022, one that said August 5 was “Jammu and Kashmir Black Day” and another that said “Happy Independence Day Pakistan” for August 14, which led to an FIR under Section 153A IPC (promoting enmity).

Ultimately, the Supreme Court quashed the prosecution, holding, in context, that the posts were political dissent, and that the malignity needed to bring Section 153A to bear was absent. In framing its position, the Court used a “reasonable person” test, held that dissent cannot become criminal, and that Section 153A cannot arbitrarily hush criticism.

The judgment even expressed concern of an institutional dimension to the whole inquiry – the way vague statutory language and untrained policing convert speech into a pathway to detainment. The case matters here because it illustrates this immediacy of the carceral leap: a single FIR, typically framed as ‘communal’ is potential for arrest, then detained (which can last indefinitely), and an undertrial is then captured as a unique entry status backed into an undeterred victimized group in yearly NCRB tables – but without record of the chilling context the data point entries rely on.

Caste, Community, and Architecture of Incarceration

If the data of 2023 offered a snapshot of social disparity, 2025 is telling us how deeply rooted that disparity is. Dalits still comprise more than one-fifth of India’s prisoners, Adivasis make up close to one-eighth and Muslims about one in six – these numbers have barely budged, nor has official concern.

The NCRB’s lack of willingness to make claims about any overrepresentations is simply political silence repackaged as bureaucratic neutrality. To them, these disparities are naturally occurring, which they are not. From police profiling to the refusal of bail, the criminal justice pipeline re-generates, with unsettling accuracy, India’s social order. Sociologist Harsh Mander once called Indian prisons “the moral underside of democracy”. By 2025, that description feels literal. The undertrial prisoner, mostly poor and caste-characterized, remains India’s longest-term prisoner.

Walled in, the caste labour persists. Dalit and Adivasi prisoners still carry out daily cleaning, cooking, and sanitation duties – caste work that replicates caste labour outside of prison. Freedom, as this data shows, is not evenly distributed, and neither is labour.

Faith Behind Bars

Faith-based profiling is no longer an accusation; it is well-established as an open secret. As with the speculative basis for immediate detention and discredited action, Muslim men are disproportionately subjected to both the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and preventive provisions of the National Security Act (NSA), particularly in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Delhi.

India’s jails have become a reflection of its hierarchies rather than a place of justice. In Prison Statistics India 2023, India has 5.8 lakh prisoners, of which 77.9% (≈ 4.5 lakh prisoners) are un-convicted, which is the highest proportion in over a decade. Overcrowding was reported at 133% of capacity on a national level, mostly in jails of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh. Behind the numbers is a familiar trend: Dalits at 22% of all prisoners, Adivasis at 13%, and Muslims at 16% of all prisoners, which is all considerably higher than their percentage of the population in India. The tables in the NCRB’s report list out these categories without any comment, presenting social injustices as administrative facts. By refusing to analyse factors surrounding why certain groups have disproportionately higher rates of representation in the prison system, the state legitimizes exclusion by normalising systemic inequality into statistical fact, reported The NEWS Minute.

Discrimination is not only seen in prison numbers, but also in parole and the speediness of trials. Baba Ram Rahim, who is a convicted murderer and rapist, was granted parole a staggering 14 times, from October 2020 to August 2025, with three terms being in 2025 itself. In contrast, Umar Khalid, who is an activist, has been in jail for five years without trial, and his bail has been denied multiple times under the pretext of “threat to national security.”

In flattening faith into numbers, the NCRB reduces prejudice to neutrality. The state of the prison, like the data, either becomes a place of discrimination in plain sight.

Women, Gender, and the Data of Absence

Women made up 4.3% of prisoners in the NCRB’s 2023 data – enough of a smidgeon that it could begin to be ignored. But, as reports from Sabrang India and the NHRC (2024) point out, their invisibility is not statistical; it is structural.

Most women’s incarceration is tied to a survival offense: theft, domestic disputes, or moral policing. Very few get access to a lawyer, healthcare, or childcare. By 2025, only 22 prisons in the country had crèches available to inmates.

Gender minorities are truly invisible. NCRB continues to count “male/female” – which leaves out transgender and non-binary prisoners. Activists are quick to inform us about the fact that data does not equal policy – no transgender cells, no hormone therapy, no protections against abuse.

The prison manual has not been updated to adjust to constitutional morality; its silences are administrative, but the reality is lived experience.

The Data of Denial

One of the more evident lessons of 2023, then, was the degree to which data can make inequality appear normative. Two years later, the lesson has only gained in strength.

The NCRB’s refusal to disaggregate incarceration data according to religion, caste or class across the bail stage and the conviction stage continues to obscure systemic bias. By counting only what fits within bureaucratic constructs, all of it can work to conceal acts of discrimination as neutrality.

The same governmental decision to stop collecting data on lynchings and hate crimes after 2017 appears again in the prison context — a continuation of silence on the part of the state. What the state does not collect, it cannot be held accountable for reporting.

In Jammu & Kashmir, where hundreds have been pre-emptively detained under the Public Safety Act (PSA) after the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019, the NCRB’s Crime in India 2023 – with its stunningly low figures – reported zero cases of sedition or communal violence. However, reports on the ground indicate otherwise, as do court files. Fahad Shah, the editor of Kashmir Walla, and journalist Sajjad Gul were jailed under UAPA and PSA in March 2023, despite numerous bail orders, for their articles deemed “anti-national.” In the same year, the Jammu & Kashmir Police reported under RTI, accessed by Article 14, that they had invoked PSA against 412 persons on a preventive basis. The contradiction here is not criminality versus adherence to justice but rather the moral experience of being measured: if one is not on the record, proof of adherence is sworn. The fewer crimes, the more the state can claim it has successfully imposed “peace.” What one measures is not justice but rather compliance.

The Republic Behind Bars

Looking back from 2025, India’s prisons do not seem an exception to justice, but its crucible. The state’s preoccupation with order has turned imprisonment into governance. The 77% undertrial rate isn’t about the administration of justice; it is about the exercise of power.

As Dr. B.R. Ambedkar warned, democracy in India does not rest on what we write on paper, but on how the state treats the utterly powerless; two years on from the NCRB 2023 report, the statistics continue to accuse us.

They illustrate a Republic where faith dictates remand, caste controls bail, and poverty dictates punishment. If freedom is going to mean anything, it will have to mean spilling the data. Prison reform, bail parity, and accurate evidence-based transparency reporting are not just procedural niceties; they are unfinished business from the Constitution itself.

Until then, the incarceration ledger will remain the most honest reflection of modern India — meaning a nation where justice, for far too many, begins only after imprisonment ends.

(The legal research team of CJP consists of lawyers and interns; this resource has been worked on by Preksha Bothara)

Related:

Almost 2 Lakh Undertrials Languishing Behind Bars: Outbreak of COVID-19 Exposed Inequality in Indian Prisons

Data Without Justice: What NCRB’s Prison Statistics Reveal About Caste, Faith and Inequality

Who Gets Bail, Who Stays Behind Bars: A Tale of Unequal Liberty in India’s Criminal Justice System

NCRB’s Prison Statistics Report 2019 paints a bleak picture

The post Counting the Caged: What India’s prison data refuses to see appeared first on SabrangIndia.

On April 23, while hearing the plea for prison reforms (W.P.(C) No. 406/2013), the Supreme Court bench of Justices Hima Kohli and Ahsanuddin Amanullah castigated the States for not providing proper details in their affidavits about the conditions of prisons, and neglecting the court directives to carry out prison reforms in district and central jails based on the recommendations of District Committees setup by the court through its order on January 30, 2024. It also expressed displeasure over the States’ lackadaisical approach for not treating the matter seriously, and for failing to provide necessary information about the steps taken to improve prison infrastructure and living standards in jails.

The court gave couple of weeks’ time to the Chief Secretaries of the concerned States/UTs to file the affidavits, “emphasizing that the affidavits shall mention the manner in which recommendations given by the respective Committees are proposed to be implemented and the timelines for such implementation”, LiveLaw reported.

Notably, in its January order the bench had directed the States/UTs to create District Committees comprising District Judge, District Magistrate, Superintendent of Police, Secretary of District Legal Services Authority, and Superintendent of Jail, to study the conditions of prisons at a district level and send their recommendations to States for improving living conditions of prisoners, including creation of new prisons to reduce overcrowding, and ensuring proper sanitation, hygiene, food, health, education, and other services in the prisons.

In one of its earlier judgements in the same case, in February 2016, the bench of Justices Madan Lokur and R.K. Agrawal had asked States to strictly implement Model Prison Code 2016, and cautioned that it “needs to be implemented with due seriousness and dispatch” so that it is not “reduced to yet another document that might be reviewed only decades later, if at all”. In the same judgement, the bench had also taken note of the plight of undertrial prisoners and had urged the States to see to it that poor undertrial prisoner who have secured bail do not languish in jails due to their poor economic status or inability to pay bail money. Emphasising on the need to improve prison conditions, the bench directed in its judgement that “The Director General of Police/Inspector General of Police in-charge of prisons should ensure that there is proper and effective utilization of available funds so that the living conditions of the prisoners is commensurate with human dignity. This also includes the issue of their health, hygiene, food, clothing, rehabilitation etc.” The bench then had relied on landmark judgements like Sunil Batra ((1978) 4 SCC 494), Sunil Batra (II) v. Delhi Administration ((1980) 3 SCC 488), Rama Murthy v. State of Karnataka ((1997) 2 SCC 642), and T. K. Gopal v. State of Karnataka ((2000) 6 SCC 168) to argue in favour of humanitarian prison reforms.

Rama Murthy judgement specifically lists down 9 areas of immediate concern, which includes:

1. Over-crowding
2. Delay in trial
3. Torture and ill-treatment
4. Neglect of health and hygiene
5. Insubstantial food and inadequate clothing
6. Prison vices
7. Deficiency in communication
8. Streamlining of jail visits
9. Management of open-air prisons

Background on Prison Reforms

Since the establishment of modern prison in India by TB Macaulay in 1935, there has been numerous attempts by governments, both pre-independence and post-independence, to change the living conditions in prisons. Post-independence, Pakwasa Committee in 1949 suggested that prisoners can be used as labour for road work without any intensive supervision over them. It was from this time onwards that a system of wages for prisoners for their labour was introduced, and subsequently, certain liberal provisions were also introduced in jails manuals by which well-behaved inmates were rewarded with remission in their sentence, as per the report prepared by the Lok Sabha Secretariat on prison reforms.

The Government of India appointed the All-India Jail Manual Committee in 1957 to prepare a model prison manual following the recommendations of Dr. W.C. Reckless regarding prison reform in India, the latter being the United Nations expert on correctional work. The aforementioned committee prepared the Model Prison Manual in 1960, which became the basis for the Central Government to appoint a working group on prisons in 1972, which recommended classification of prisoners and their treatment based on certain principles.

In 1980 the Government of India set-up a Committee on Jail Reforms under the Chairmanship of Justice A. N. Mulla, which submitted its report in 1983 recommending the following measures:

• Improving prison condition by making available proper food, clothing, and sanitation.
• The prison staff to be properly trained and organized into different cadres, with the setting up an All-India Service called the Indian Prisons & Correctional Service.
• After-care, rehabilitation and probation to be an integral part of prison service.
• The press and public to be allowed inside prisons and allied correctional institutions periodically, so that the public may have first-hand information about the conditions of prisons and be willing to co-operate in rehabilitation work.
• Undertrials in jails to be reduced to bare minimum and they be kept away from convicts. Furthermore, the number of undertrials to be reduced by speedy trial and liberalization of bail provisions.
• The Government may make an effort to provide adequate financial resources.

Shortly afterwards in 1987, Justice Krishna Iyer Committee, setup to study the conditions of women prisoners, recommended induction of more women into the police force in view of their special role in tackling women and child offenders.

Following the Supreme Court direction in Rama Murthy (mentioned above) to prepare uniform prison laws across the country, a draft Model Prison Management Bill (The Prison Administration and Treatment of Prisoners Bill, 1998) was circulated among the States, but pertinently, the Bill was never finalised. Since then, two Model Prison Manual(s) have already come out, one in 2003, and the latest one in 2016.

In 2021, Rajya Sabha MP K.C. Ramamurthy requested the Minister of Home Affairs to provide details about the salient features of 2016 Model Prison Manual, its implementation by the States, and how the Government intends to ensure the implementation of Nelson Mandela Rules in prisons.

Responding to his query, Minister of State for Home Affairs (MoS), G. Kisan Reddy, stated the following in response to highlight the salient features of Model Prison Manual 2016:

• It brings in basic uniformity in laws, rules and regulations governing the administration of prisons and the management of prisoners all over the country
• Lays down the framework for both sound custody and treatment of prisoners
• Spells out minimum standards of institutional services for the care, protection, treatment, education, training and re-socialisation of incarcerated offenders
• Evolving procedures for the protection of human rights of prisoners within the limitations imposed by the process of incarceration
• Individualises institutional treatment of prisoners in keeping with their personal characteristics, behavioural patterns and correctional requirements
• Forging constructive linkages between prison programmes and community- based welfare institutions in achieving the objective of the reformation and rehabilitation of prisoners
• Access to free legal services: legal aid clinics, jail visiting advocates, constitution of under-trial review committees
• Provisions for women prisoners including safeguards, protections, special programmes, counselling, focussed after-care and rehabilitation, as well as provisions for children of women prisoners
• Legal aid to prisoners sentenced to death, mental health evaluation, procedures and channels for mercy petition
• Prison Modernisation: Use of technology/software including Personnel Information System, installation of CCTVs etc. to prevent violation of Human Rights

While commenting on the conformity to the Nelson Mandela Rules, MoS for Ministry of Home Affairs suggested that States are ultimately responsible for their implementation, and the Union Government has already sent the respective Rules to the States, asking them to implement the same. The response also noted that the Union has advised the States to have these rules (Nelson Mandela Rules) “translated in local language and disseminate the guidance contained therein to all prison officials to ensure that these rules are followed by the officials concerned in dealing with prison inmates.”

CJP’s endeavour towards bringing police accountability and prison reforms

CJP has in the past reported about the incidents affecting right to liberty of the citizens (Article 21) due to police accesses and has also advocated for the police reforms. In the case of Pankaj Kumar Sharma v Govt of NCT of Delhi & Ors, CJP reported how the Delhi High Court came down heavily on the Delhi Police personnel responsible for illegally detaining the citizen (Pankaj Kumar Sharma) and issued a compensation of 50,000 rupees from the salaries of the two police officials responsible for the misconduct, namely, (Sub-Inspectors) Rajeev Gautam and Shamim Khan. In the judgement delivered by Justice Subramonium Prasad, the court noted that “The time spent in the lock-up by the petitioner, even for a short while, cannot absolve the police officers who have deprived the petitioners of his liberty without following the due procedure established by law… This Court is of the opinion that a meaningful message must be sent to the authorities that police officers cannot be law unto themselves”.

In the aforementioned case, the court relied on number of important judicial precedents, including D K Basu v. State of West Bengal, in which the apex court had released guidelines to be followed by the police while arresting or detaining a concerned citizen.

The DK Basu guidelines among other things require the police to ensure the following:

1. The police personnel carrying out the arrest and handling the interrogation of the arrestee should bear accurate, visible and clear identification and name tags with their designations. The particulars of all such police personnel who handle interrogation of the arrestee must be recorded in a register
2. That the police officer carrying out the arrest shall prepare a memo of arrest at the time of arrest and such memo shall be attested by at least one witness, who may be either a member of the family of the arrestee or a respectable person of the locality from where the arrest is made. It shall also be counter signed by the arrestee and shall contain the time and date of arrest.
3. A person who has been arrested or detained and is being held in custody in a police station or interrogation centre or other lock up, shall be entitled to have one friend or relative or other person known to him or having interest in his welfare being informed, as soon as practicable, that he has been arrested and is being detained at the particular place, unless the attesting witness of the memo of arrest is himself such a friend or a relative of the arrestee.
4. The time, place of arrest and venue of custody of an arrestee must be notified by the police where the next friend or relative of the arrestee lives outside the district or town through the Legal Aid Organisation in the District and the police station of the area concerned telegraphically within a period of 8 to 12 hours after the arrest.
5. The person arrested must be made aware of his right to have someone informed of his arrest or detention as soon as he is put under arrest or is detained.
6. An entry must be made in the diary at the place of detention regarding the arrest of the person which shall also disclose the name of the next friend of the person who has been informed of the arrest and the names land particulars of the police officials in whose custody the arrestee is.
7. The arrestee should, where he so requests, be also examined at the time of his arrest and major and minor injuries, if any present on his/her body, must be recorded at that time. The ‘Inspection Memo’ must be signed both by the arrestee and the police officer effecting the arrest and its copy provided to the arrestee.
8. The arrestee should be subjected to medical examination by the trained doctor every 48 hours during his detention in custody by a doctor on the panel of approved doctors appointed by Director, Health Services of the concerned State or Union Territory, Director, Health Services should prepare such a panel for all Tehsils and Districts as well.
9. Copies of all the documents including the memo of arrest, referred to above, should be sent to the Magistrate for his record.
10. The arrestee may be permitted to meet his lawyer during interrogation, though not throughout the interrogation.

In addition, the judgement also relied on Nilabati Behera (1993 AIR 1960) to provide compensation to the victim of illegal act of detention carried out by the police. Importantly, in Nilabati Behera the court had noted that “citizen complaining of the infringement of the indefeasible right under Article 21 of the Constitution cannot be told that for the established violation of the fundamental right to life, he cannot get any relief under the public law by the courts exercising writ jurisdiction.”

Similarly, CJP continued to raise awareness about the Police Complaints Authorities (PCA) in Maharashtra, for which a user guide was initially released by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI). PCAs were established in Maharashtra in 2014 at the state level (1) and divisional level (6) to register complaints or grievances against police personnel for serious misconduct, corruption, or abuse of authority.

PCAs have wide ambit of power to perform the following functions:

1. Conduct suo moto inquiries or through complaints against Police Officers, hear all concerned persons, receive evidence, and give recommendations to be implemented by the police department and the state government
2. Advise the state government to ensure the protection of witnesses, victims and their families who face, or may face, threats or harassment for filing a complaint against the police
3. Visit any police station, lock-up or other place of detention used by the police (with written authorisation from the Chairperson).
4. Receive complaints involving death in police custody, grievous hurt under Section 320 of the IPC, rape or attempt to commit rape, arrest or detention without following procedure, corruption, extortion, land or house grabbing and any other serious violation of law or abuse of authority

In 2018, CJP once again raised its voice against the growing misuse of police across the country to supress peaceful protests by the citizens. It moved the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) demanding guidelines on how the police should behave with peaceful protestors in order to protect citizens’ right to peaceful protest under Article 19 of the Constitution.

CJP-PUCL manifesto on prison reforms and police accountability

Before the election to Lok Sabha 2024 took off, CJP and PUCL jointly released their manifesto, which among other things also deal with the long pending issue of prison reforms, especially with regard to the rights of undertrial prisoners. The following demands have been raised in our manifesto:

1. Follow and implement relevant judgments of the Supreme Court on under trials and ensure prison reforms in accordance with the Model Manual for Prison Reform, 2016.
2. Order the immediate release of under trials who have already served half their maximum sentence.
3. Ensure regular monitoring of prison conditions, particularly in relation to women and children through the implementation of district and other monitoring committees as per the Model Manual Prison Reform, 2016.
4. Ensure adequate sanitation and health facilities, and emphasise cleanliness and adequate food and clean water; access to work, reading and writing materials in all prisons.
5. Ensure efficient, regular and quality legal aid to all under trials and other prisoners.
6. Ensure the emoluments to the prison employment staff (including services of convicted prisoners utilised by the state) meet the standards of the updated standards in the Minimum Wages Act, 1948.
7. Ensure training and sensitisation of all Jail/Prison staff in national and international human rights standards to ensure just and humane conditions within prisons.
8. Explore the shift to an Open Prison System for less stringent crimes.
9. Allow human rights defenders (HRDs) full and free access to police stations, prisoners, etc.
10. Abolition of capital punishment and all forms of torture.
11. Ratification of the United Nations Convention Against Torture (UNCAT), effecting of changes in domestic legislation to ensure compliance with the provisions of UNCAT and introduction of domestic law against torture and ill-treatment in line with the provisions of UNCAT.
12. Ensure the strictest adherence to the rule of law and immediately put a stop to all forms of torture by the police, custodial killings, extra judicial / encounter killings etc.
13. Remove requirement for sanction to prosecute police officers, military personnel and public officials from all laws and take strictest action against erring officers.
14. Strengthen the law already enacted for the protection of whistle blowers.
15. Full implementation of police reform provisions in line with not just the Supreme Court judgement in the Prakash Singh case, but also the recommendations made by the National Police Commission Reports.
16. Ensure the establishment of Independent Directorates of Prosecutions that are monitored by the higher judiciary and are independent of the executive arm of the government.

Related:

Indian Prison Condition and Monitoring

Monitoring the condition of Indian prisons

India Justice Report 2019 highlights country’s failing criminal justice system

The post SC asks States to improve prison conditions, address the issue of overcrowding in prisons in its latest rebuke to States for not following its previous directives effectively appeared first on SabrangIndia.

“To improve prison conditions does not mean that prison life should be made soft; it means that it should be made human and sensible.” – Jawaharlal Nehru in India and the World

Prisons are those public institutions that are fundamentally the least public in nature. What happens within the high walls of a prison, remains within those high walls and very little news of the lives of the prisoners makes it into the public domain. Prisons are meant to house undertrials and convicts to protect society from offenders and their crimes but prisons are also places where convicts and undertrials live a covert life making them more prone to being subject to inhumane conditions.

Naturally, an institution like that needs a decent monitoring system to ensure that no prison authority functions without having to be accountable for incidents and occurrences within the prison. The overemphasis on ‘security of prisons’ has not only invisibilised prison conditions, but also obscured the statutory monitoring mechanisms that need to be available for public scrutiny.

A prison, being a well-guarded, high walled institution, is hidden from the public eye and the occurrences within the prisons seldom get public attention. This means there is a section of our population that spends, in many cases, significant amount of time of their lives in such a place that is removed from public glare and attention. There is never too much concern over a prisoner’s death in a prison because society believes more in vindication than in reformation, and thus has less regard for the life or the rights of a prisoner.  Never mind the fact that as per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) Report of 2018, 69.4 percent of these prisoners are hapless undertrials, languishing in jails only because they lack the wherewithal to challenge their egregious term. Statutory norms exist on our Prison Manuals but poor application, societal disdain and an institutional apathy to ensure implementation have relegated the monitoring of prison conditions to a farce.

In the research paper titled The Mess We’re In: Five Steps Towards the Transformation of Prison Cultures author Lynn Branham said, “Treating prisoners not as objects, but as the human beings they are, no matter how despicable their prior actions, will demonstrate an unflagging commitment to human dignity. It is that commitment to human dignity that will, in the end, be the essential underpinning of any endeavour to transform prison cultures.”

It is this commitment to human dignity that should inform the discourse regarding the rights of prisoners. Simply establishing a right is not adequate, but safeguarding it is as much a part of the process of the realisation of that right. Rights without remedy are illusory. Hence, if a prisoner whose rights are being violated does not have a redressal mechanism at his disposal, the existence of the rights is nullified.

Justice RC Lahoti, former Chief Justice of India had in a letter petition to the Supreme Court mentioned a quote from a research paper, “Judges rarely express concern for the inhumane treatment that the person being sentenced is likely to face from fellow prisoners and prison officials, or that time in prison provides poor preparation for a productive life afterwards. Courts rarely consider tragic personal pasts that may be partly responsible for criminal behaviour, or how the communities and families of a defendant will suffer during and long after his imprisonment.” This letter petition was converted into a suo moto petition In Re Inhuman Conditions in 1382 Prisons [(2016) 3SCC 700].

Watching the Watchdogs

Here we have a look at the internal as well as external mechanisms in India for the monitoring of prisons to ensure that prisons function as per the rules laid out, and that prisoners live there under humane conditions.

Compliance and prison management

Compliance of rules within the prison is meant to be checked by prison authorities. The improvement of conditions and maintenance of humane conditions are to be ensured by prison authorities and their subordinates. A study of the entire system reveals a closed system as all the monitoring and reporting happens within the department, with no external checks and balances rendering an opaque system… unaccountable.

Internal monitoring

It is the Model Prison Manual, 2016, released by the Ministry of Home Affairs, that lays down the roster. Under this, the Deputy Superintendent (DSP) is supposed to visit the prison twice a day and once a week at night to satisfy himself that no untoward incident has taken place and that everything is in order. The DSP reports to the Superintendent and the Superintendent further reports to the Inspector General of Prisons of that state. The Superintendent is also expected to make surprise visits to the prison to keep a check.

The prison manual also provides for a Grievance Redressal system, which requires prisons to have a complaint box which is to be opened by the Deputy Superintendent every evening. The prisons are also required to have a permanent Grievance Redressal Committee comprising the Superintendent, the Deputy Superintendent, the Medical Officer, and the Welfare Officer. If the prison has a female enclosure, one-woman officer, not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent needs to be on the Grievance Redressal Committee. This Committee is supposed to look at the complaints in their bi-weekly meetings.

Clause 19.16 (xii) of the Model Prison Manual states that, letters addressed by prisoners to the Government, Judiciary, Inspector General of Prisons or other high functionaries should be forwarded to them immediately without being censored and a dated receipt of these should be given to the prisoner who has authored them. This provision is made to ensure that the prisoner is able to communicate with whichever authority he wishes to address his concerns and grievances to.

On paper, these rules sound ideal. If followed in good faith and practice, conditions of prisons in India would surely not be the opaque den of disease, squalor and filth in India. First person accounts of recent political prisoners are clear giveaways of how prisons are still ill managed no matter how ideal the manual looks on paper. The rosy model manual not only lacks implementation on man a count, but also most significantly falls short on robust external scrutiny and monitoring. Public scrutiny becomes an imperative aspect of prison management, and eventually of safeguarding prisoners’ rights within the high walls of a prison.

External scrutiny: Who should watch the watchdogs?

Monitoring and scrutiny of any institution is best done by a party independent from its control or influence. It is then less likely that any violation of the rules will come to be reported beyond the high walls of a prison since that would open it to questioning, accountability and liability. Hence, it becomes important that an authority independent of the prison authorities, bureaucracy and government, keeps a check on their functioning to ensure the rules are being followed and prisoners are living in decent, liveable conditions.

District judge

Hence, the Model Prison Manual provides that the District Judge should visit each prison under his jurisdiction once a month and give an opportunity to all the prisoners to present their grievances or requests, if they so desire, in the absence of prison officers. This is described as a statutory function of a District Judge and thus becomes binding on him/her. However, there is no public access to records of whether these visits are actually made.

As per a report of the Commonwealth human Rights Initiative (CHRI) ‘Prison visiting system in India’ states that State supervision over day-to-day happenings within such institutions has been reduced to a mere formality. The report cited a judgment of the Madhya Pradesh High Court in Ranchod Vs. State of M.P. (1986 16 Reports M.P. 147) in which the callous behaviour of jail doctors, maltreatment by jail staff and tampering of jail records came up for judicial scrutiny. Through the judgment, the bench questioned the efficiency of monitoring of prisons in India,

“Do our District and Sessions Judges, who are ex- officio visitors to the jail within their respective jurisdiction, the Director of Health Services, the Civil Surgeon or Medical Officers, the representatives of people representing particular urban or rural constituency in the State Legislature and the non-official visitors, as appointed…do they satisfy themselves that the law, rules regulating the management of prisons and prisoners are duly carried out? Their duties are enumerated in the Jail Manual. They can call for and inspect any book or other record in the jail. Have they regularly visited the jail so as to apprise themselves of the genuine problems the prisoners are facing and their grievances? The non-official visitors to the jail, appointed by the State Government, have they justified their appointment by getting themselves acquainted with the prisoners’ problems and making efforts for amelioration of their lot, within the framework of the Jail Manual itself; if all this had been going on smoothly, as is expected and sought to be, possibly there was no need for this letter petition. The question looms large, who bothers..”

The report further states that “The system of prison visitors is still considered by prison staff as an un-necessary intrusion in their work, and non-official visitors reduce their functions to mere clerical formality in the absence of any accountability.”

District & Session Judge

Under clause 26.26 of the 2016 Model Prison Manual, the District and Sessions Judge is duty bound to visit and inspect high security and other prisons, and to satisfy himself that all rules, regulations, directions and orders made or issued to such prisons, are duly observed and enforced. The frequency of these visits has not been specified and hence, the accountability of the monitoring process under the Judge is considerably lessened. The Sessions judge also has the authority to issue an order based his observations, albeit, without undermining the authority of the Superintendent over subordinate prison officers as well as prisoners. The record of such visits are, however, not made public making it nearly impossible to ensure real accountability.

Justice JS Verma, former Chief Justice of India and later Chairperson of the National human Rights Commission had sharply pointed to some lacunae. This was two decades ago through a letter to the Chief Justices of all High Courts with regard to human rights in prisons in January 2000. In the letter he pointed out how “Sessions Judges are not regular in visiting prisons and the District Committee headed by Sessions Judge / District Magistrate and comprised of senior Superintendent of Police is not meeting at regular intervals to review the conditions of the prisoners.” He had further stated in the letter that, “The prisoners are in judicial custody and hence it is incumbent upon the Sessions Judges to monitor their living conditions and ensure that humane conditions prevail within the prison walls also.” He further asked Chief Justices of high courts to consider giving appropriate instructions to District and Sessions Judges to make these visit frequent and regular as per the law as otherwise it has an impact on the human rights of the prisoners, in absence of monitoring.

Board of visitors

The Manual also makes it binding upon state governments to constitute a Board of Visitors comprising Official and Non-official members at District and Sub-divisional level in order to monitor the correctional work in prison, infrastructure in prisons, gathering grievances of prisoners and providing redressal.

The Board of Visitors at District level are supposed to comprise official members such as District Magistrate; District Judge; Chief Medical Officer of the Health Department, at the District level; Executive Engineer, PWD at the District level District Inspector of Schools; District Social Welfare Officer and District Agricultural Officer. They are also meant to include non-official members like Three Members of the Legislative Assembly, one of them being a woman; one nominee of the State Commission for Women and two social workers.

This board of visitors is to meet the Superintendent once in every quarter of the year (three times a year) and the details of such a meeting have to be submitted to the Inspector General of Prisons. At least one member of the Board is supposed to visit the prison once a month, without having to give any intimation to any prison authority. This means this is required to be a surprise visit. They have the freedom to speak to prisoners individually as well as secretly without having to be in the hearing range of a prison officer.

Do such visits take place?

How do Indian citizens and members of the public know that such statutorily required monitoring steps and mechanisms are actually being implemented?

Apart from attending to grievances and attempting to redress them, the Board is also to attend to the quality and quantity of the Prison diet, conditions (hygiene) of the kitchen and hospital, availability of medicines, hospital management, medical treatment of the prisoners, sanitary arrangements, aspects of vocational trainings, literacy program, and library facility for the prisoners. Any member of the board is given the power to call for and inspect any book, or other record, in the prison, unless the Superintendent declines it, on the grounds that the production would be undesirable. This puts the power back into the hands of the Superintendent, who is one authority that is in need of maximum scrutiny and monitoring.

Further, the Superintendent is required to ensure that the prisoners lodging complaints with the visiting member/members of the Board of visitor do not subsequently fall prey to vendetta of the accused or prison staff complained against. This sounds more utopian than real. If this process if duly followed and if a prisoner is made aware that his complaint is ultimately going to the Superintendent, it is less likely that any true grievances will be expressed.

A 2016 report of the CHRI, Looking into the haze- A study on prison monitoring in India, had concluded that only Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Meghalaya and Tripura had Board of Visitors in all their jails, until 2016.

Transparency

Neither the internal nor the external monitoring mechanisms of prisons are transparent in any manner. While the prison authorities at all levels are required to keep a record of their duties performed as per the prison manual, these records stay within the high walls of the prison, the Deputy Superintendent reports to the Superintendent and he in turn reports to the Inspector General of Prisons but the record kept is not required to be made available for public scrutiny by default.

The few reports that reach the government are reports on deaths in prisons, escape of a prisoner, and death of prisoner in transit and report of prisoners on hunger strike.  The death of prisoner in transit is also supposed to be reported to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Apart from this, only the annual report on the functioning and progresses achieved by the Department of Prisons and Correctional Services is placed before the state legislature. These Annual Reports were not found to have been uploaded on prison department website of the states.

Jurisprudence on prison conditions

Re Inhuman Conditions in 1382 Prisons [(2016) 3SCC 700] is only the recent landmark apex court judgment concerning prison conditions. This was a suo moto case converted from a letter written by former Chief Justice of India, Justice RC Lahoti to the then CJI, Justice Madan B Lokur. The main issues raised were overcrowded prisons, unnatural deaths of prisoners, inadequacy of staff and inadequately trained staff. The bench of CJI Lokur and Justice RK Agrawal observed, after having a look at the state responses that, by-and-large, the steps taken by the state were facile and lack adequate sincerity in implementation.

Through state responses the court were apprised of the fact that despite funds being allocated under the 13th Finance Commission for the improvement of conditions in prisons no grant was allotted in as many as 19 States and in the States where grants were allotted, the utilisation was less than 100 percent.

The Model Prison Manual, 2016 cited hereinabove is the result of the nudge given by the apex court in this case since the former prison Manual dated as long back as 2003. Even undertrial review committees were set up at district levels in states to ensure that undertrials do not have to languish in jails owing to lack of legal aid and their inability to have access to the courts for securing bail.

Are prisons truly monitored?

This judgment, which was delivered two years ago, led to complete revamp of the prison manual, which had not been reviewed since 2003! It also led, successfully, to the setting up of undertrial review committees at district level in all states. The review of the prison manual ensured inclusion of provisions such as the Board of Visitors which is an extremely important provision as it gives even non-official members such as social activists a glimpse into prisoners’ lives and to face to face with their grievances.

Once the Board of Visitors are able to voice their concerns to the Superintendent, there is nothing in the manual to ensure follow up actions in this regard. The power of the Board is, therefore, limited. The fact that these reports from the Board of Visitors  are not required to be submitted to the state Home department, means that the political class, representatives of the people are also not entirely in the know of prison conditions and efficacy of monitoring systems. This also means that is essentially a closed circle of people –IPS officers and bureaucrats –who hear grievances, which may or may not be redressed.

Rights without remedies are illusory and rights with only apparent remedies negates the rights completely. Despite of the refurbished and revised Model Prison Manual, 2016 –an exercise undertaken due to a nudge from the Indian Supreme Court –that, for the first time, gave outsiders access to prisons, this method of monitoring does not meet o transparency continues to rule the day.

Related:

Does India uphold Prisoners’ Right to Health?

“No place for encounter in a country governed by rule of law”: Justice Deepak Gupta

The post What lies behind the high walls of Indian prisons? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Since 2014, murder convict Deepak Lalaprasad, 33, has been living in an open prison in Udaipur, having conducted himself well for 10 years in a conventional prison. One of 24 inmates at the open prison, Deepak now runs a stall near the Udaipur central bus depot. As many as 1,127 prisoners in 29 open jails in Rajasthan work as accountants, school teachers, domestic help and security guards.

Casual passersby or customers could never guess that these two men were convicts serving life sentences under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code of 1860–for murder.

Since 2014, Kalu and Deepak have been living in an open prison in Udaipur, having conducted themselves well for 10 years in conventional prisons. Inmates at this prison are permitted to stay with their families and go out during the day to earn a living. As many as 1,127 prisoners in 29 open jails in Rajasthan work as accountants, school teachers, domestic help and security guards, even those serving time for murder.

Prisoners’ rooms at the Udaipur open prison. Inmates at this prison are permitted to stay with their families and go out during the day to earn a living.

Not only do these prisons present an early opportunity for prisoners’ reform and rehabilitation back into society, they also cost less in terms of money and staff, a 2017 report on Rajasthan’s open prisons said, based on which the Supreme Court in May 2018 ordered state governments to fully utilise and expand the capacity of open prisons as well as set up more open prisons.

Why open prisons
Conceptually, open prisons were developed to rehabilitate prisoners who had almost completed their sentence. In the earliest open prisons developed in the U.S. in the 19th century, prisoners nearing release were sent to work as labourers to evaluate their behaviour. In India, the earliest open prison established in 1953 in Uttar Pradesh housed prisoners who were requisitioned to construct a dam over the river Chandraprabha, near Varanasi.

It was in Rajasthan’s first open prison–a farm set up in Durgapura near Jaipur in 1955–that prisoners were first allowed to stay with their families and work on the farm or nearby.

In December 2017, the Supreme Court asked states to establish an open prison in each district based on a 2017 report that detailed the success of Rajasthan’s open jail system. It followed up this suggestion with an order on May 8, 2018, asking states to “try and utilise the capacity of these open prisons”–which number 63 and have a capacity of 5,370, but have 30% seats unutilised–adding that states should consider increasing the capacity of existing open prisons and “seriously consider the feasibility of establishing open prisons in as many locations as possible”.

In creating open prisons where the rehabilitation of prisoners could start from the day they are incarcerated, instead of after they have served the greater part of their sentence, India would not become any less safe, the report mentioned above showed.

Commissioned by the Rajasthan State Legal Services Authority and released on National Law Day–November 26–in 2017, the report showed that open prisons “reduce the burden on the exchequer”, “reduce overcrowding in prisons” and “strengthen the social fabric by mainstreaming estranged individuals who are in conflict with the law”, to quote Kalpesh Satyendra Jhaveri, executive chairperson of the authority, who commissioned the report. He is now the chief justice of the Odisha High Court.

‘Not a threat to society’
Consider this scenario: A man’s daughter is raped. The man murders the rapist to avenge the crime. He is put in jail to serve a life sentence. The man is a murderer alright, but to what extent is he a threat to society now that he has no motive to kill?

Very low, according to prison researcher Smita Chakraburtty: “Seeing all prisoners through the same lens doesn’t help use the limited funds available for prisons judiciously.”

Or, consider how Kalu landed up in jail: “I squabbled with a man over a piece of land,” he told IndiaSpend. “I had a piece of wood in my hand, so did the man I murdered, we were beating each other,” said the native of Ghosunda village, in Chittorgarh tehsil of Rajasthan.
In the scuffle, the opponent got hit on the head and died, and Kalu became a murderer. “I hadn’t planned on killing the man,” Kalu said.

Kalu Tulsiram, 35, was imprisoned after a squabble with a man over a piece of land led to the latter’s death. Such accidental or unplanned murderers constituted 57% (244) of the 428 prisoners that researcher Smita Chakraburtty met during her visits to 15 of 29 open prisons in Rajasthan.

Such accidental or unplanned murderers constituted 57% (244) of the 428 prisoners Chakraburtty met during her visits to 15 of 29 open prisons in Rajasthan. She spoke to 90% of the inmates, except those out on work during her visit, so the 57% figure is fairly representative. Eighty-one percent (347 of 428) of the prisoners were also first-time offenders, with no previous police record.

This situation is mirrored in prisons across the country. Habitual offenders or ‘recidivists’ accounted for 3% of the 186,566 convicts admitted in prisons across the country during 2015, according to the National Crime Records Bureau’s (NCRB) prison statistics for that year.

“Repeat offenders are the ones with real ‘criminal minds’, who pose a threat to society and hence must be kept in closed jails, but they are also the ones who need reform and rehabilitation the most,” Udaipur Central Jail superintendent Surendra Singh told IndiaSpend.

“Repeat offenders are the ones with real ‘criminal minds’, who pose a threat to society and hence must be kept in closed jails,” Udaipur Central Jail superintendent Surendra Singh said. Habitual offenders or ‘recidivists’ accounted for 3% of the 186,566 convicts admitted in prisons across the country during 2015, government data show.

Often, people are incarcerated merely due to lack of awareness of the law, Chakraburtty said, citing as an example people imprisoned in Rajasthan for possession of opium. This reflects a lack of understanding of the nature of their offence, she said, “Because their communities have had access to opium since time immemorial, and they have no idea of the prevailing laws.”

The possession of any narcotic is a non-bailable offence under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act of 1985. However, the cultivation of opium is permitted, under license, in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

Apart from offenders who are psychopaths or who have performed exceptionally brutal crimes, most prisoners do not need to be removed from society, Chakraburtty said. They need to be watched over, made aware of their crime and rehabilitated.

“Justice is not revenge. It has to work for the victim as much as for the perpetrator,” Chakraburtty said, “If society responds with more violence, the prisoner develops vengeance for society and comes out hardened. If we ignore a prisoner’s need to earn a livelihood for his family, a man could enter the prison as a rapist and leave as a gangster.”

Open jails and prisoner behaviour
At Udaipur’s open air camp for prisoners (open prison for short), a roll-call each morning and evening keeps a count of the prisoners.

Overall, 1 in 45 prisoners in Rajasthan’s open prisons absconded from parole or escaped, while the all-India figure for closed prisons is 1 in 481, as per 2015 prison data. Chakraburtty’s report attributed most of the escapes from open prisons to “problems related to procuring parole and remission”–in other words, due to prisoners’ failure to furnish a bail bond, or due to adverse reports by police personnel willing to err on the side of caution.

“Administrative issues regarding parole are a common problem in prisons across India, and should be addressed,” said R.K. Saxena, former inspector general of prisons, Rajasthan, and the director of the 1982-83 Justice Mulla Committee on Prison Reforms. “Parole is a prisoners’ right, a conditional release and an opportunity for prisoners to assimilate into society.”

The report made several suggestions that would improve parole administration and thereby lower the number of prisoners recorded as having escaped. These are: Reducing the bond amount; encouraging personal bonds instead of requiring guarantors (unless a prisoner misbehaves); considering a prisoner’s behaviour alone based on social welfare department statements instead of police reports for the second parole onwards.

The police, on their part, could be sensitised on the role of open prisons in prisoner reform so that they make unbiased investigation reports when parole applications come up.

“A proactive approach in addressing the rights of prisoners is much needed,” said Ajay Chopra, an artist and social worker who was imprisoned in 2017 on corruption charges but was released on bail after three months. He now campaigns for greater acceptance of open prisons, especially after the Supreme Court’s endorsement. “A positive mindset towards prisoners is essential for prisoner reform,” he said.

Prisoners in Rajasthan’s open prisons have generally conducted themselves well, Chakraburtty told IndiaSpend. “Open jails in Rajasthan are doing something very right,” said Chakraburtty, a leading prison researcher and honorary prison commissioner for the aforementioned report, “Prison authorities have actually had to evict open jail inmates who asked for extensions after they had served their sentence because their children’s exams were approaching or because they were receiving decent medical care as convicts.”

In conversation with IndiaSpend, Kalu and Deepak, who are among 24 prisoners currently lodged in the Udaipur open prison, emphasised that a life of crime was far from their minds.

“Hotel business” is how Kalu described his tea stall work, something he said he wanted to continue doing after he was freed.

“I’d like to live in peace and work,” said Deepak about his plans after his prison term.

Segmenting by threat level
Rajasthan’s open prison system is considered a best practice in prisoners’ welfare and rehabilitation in the NCRB’s 2015 prison statistics. It has been acclaimed for “facilitating social adjustment and financial independence” of prisoners before their final release. Eligibility typically extends to “prisoners who have completed their one third part of total sentence and whose conduct in the jail was found good”, subject to the “recommendation of the committee formed by the State government,” the compilation notes.

Chakraburtty has proposed expanding the open prison network across the country to make it the norm instead of the exception, particularly for female prisoners; aged and physically infirm prisoners; people convicted for one-time offences, accidental offences, petty offences and those categorised as low risk for not showing any violent trait in prison; accused persons who surrendered; and prisoners undergoing extradition requests.

While the existing system provides for only convicted prisoners to be kept in open prisons, Chakraburtty has also recommended extending the facility to undertrials–who account for two in three people in prison in India today–to significantly lower overcrowding and inhuman living conditions in prisons.

But not everyone agrees with this idea.

“A person is denied bail and sent to judicial custody only when a magistrate has applied his mind and assessed that if not incarcerated, the evidence may be tampered [with] or investigation hampered, or there is a flight risk, thus disabling the trial process,” said Sugandha Mathur, senior programme officer for the prison reforms programme at the Delhi-based advocacy, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. “If none of these reasons exist, an accused should be released on bail to uphold their right to liberty,” she said, implying that basically, if the circumstances warrant bail, the undertrial should be freed, and if not, the prisoner should be put behind bars and not in an open prison.

Mathur is a member of the sub-committee convened by the Bureau of Police Research and Development in February 2018 to draft the Model Uniform Rules for the Administration of Open Correctional Institutions.

Economic sense, societal benefit
India has 63 open jails with a capacity of 5,370, enough to house 1.28% of the 419,623 prisoners across the country. However, 30% of their seats are unutilised, the Hindustan Times reported on December 12, 2017.

While Rajasthan tops with 29 open prisons, Maharashtra has 13, Kerala and Tamil Nadu have three each, and Gujarat and West Bengal have two each, according to Prison Statistics 2015.

The Rajasthan report advocated opening two open prisons per district because they are better suited to prisoner reform and pose less of a financial burden on the state. By comparing monthly spending on prisoners, it showed that Jaipur’s Central Jail was 14 times as expensive as its open prison in Sanganer town.

The report also recommended making legal aid and health services available to open prisoners and helping them get gainful employment by negotiating working hours with potential employers to facilitate their timely return to the camp. Keeping prisoners in their home district and improving the remuneration for those employed on state farms and facilities were some other recommendations.

“You can’t put people in prison and expect them to come out as Gandhi after seven (or however many) years unless the system is conducive to reform, which the existing closed prison system isn’t by any measure,” Chakraburtty told IndiaSpend, adding, “Open prisons should become the norm, the prisons of the future.”

Why prison reform is needed urgently
The fact remains that overcrowding is a pressing issue involving the “violation of human rights”, to quote the Supreme Court.

In 2015, the prison occupancy rate exceeded 200% in Dadra and Nagar Haveli (276.7%), Chhattisgarh (233.9%) and Delhi (226.9%), according to NCRB data. Prisons in another 13 states were full beyond capacity.

Source: Prison Statistics 2015, National Crime Records Bureau
In a recent TEDx talk, Chakraburtty, who has interacted with 30,070 prisoners lodged in closed jails in Bihar, described prisons so overcrowded that inmates tied themselves to the bars to sleep because there was no space to lie down.

Adopting the concept of open prisons–or “semi-open prisons” where eligible convicts could be allowed to work within the jail premises during the day, or in a factory after making special arrangements for their secured transport, which Mathur proposed–would free up scarce resources, in terms of funds as well as staff.

The Jaipur Central Jail spends 14 times as much as the Sanganer open prison–Rs 7,094 as against Rs 500–on each prisoner each month, Chakraburtty’s report said.

In the Sanganer open prison, Rajasthan’s largest with a capacity of 400, one staff-person manages 80 prisoners while in Jaipur Central Jail, one manages six prisoners (the recommended number is one staff for four prisoners), Chakraburtty recorded.
Staff shortages are a reality across prisons. In Rajasthan, of the 4,426 sanctioned jail department staff positions, nearly half or 2,129 are vacant.

“We’re managing roughly 1,250 prisoners with 155 guards today, while in the 1970s we had 165 guards to manage 250 prisoners,” said Singh of Udaipur Central Jail.

Staff shortages are a reality across prisons. “We’re managing roughly 1,250 prisoners with 155 guards today, while in the 1970s we had 165 guards to manage 250 prisoners,” said Surendra Singh, superintendent of Udaipur Central Jail.

Having more open jails would enable better management of closed prisons too.

“If only every state could set time guidelines for parole applications to be processed, and make prisoners aware of these rights and actively implement them, possibly fewer prisoners would abscond from parole and make open prisons a stronger proposition in prisoner reform,” Mathur said.

*The prisoners were introduced by their first name and their father’s name, as is prison convention in Rajasthan.

(Bahri is a freelance writer and editor based in Mount Abu, Rajasthan.)

Courtesy: India Spend

The post Why Open Prisons Are The Solution To India’s Overcrowded Prisons appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Representational picture. Image credit: Lex Indsier
 
The Muslim community which makes up for 14.2 per cent of the total population, fares a little higher with a percentage of 15.8 among the convicts, and much higher with a percentage of 20.9 per cent among the undertrials, as pointed out by an Indian Express report.
 
SCs having a share of 16.6 per cent in the country’s population make up for 20.9 per cent of the convicts and 21.6 per cent of the undertrials, and STs adding up to 8.6 per cent of the population, have a percentage of 13.7 in the number of convicts, and 12.4 among the undertrials. It is noteworthy that the percentage of undertrials from all three communities individually as well is higher than their conviction percentage.
 
In the 21^st edition of the NCRB prison statistics, a few changes in the ongoing trends have been noticed. While comparing the data to 2014 prison statistics, the NCRB report says the most significant increase in convictions was in rape cases — a jump of 11.6 per cent as against 1.5 per cent in murder cases and 2 per cent in overall convictions. Majority of rape convicts were lodged in Uttar Pradesh accounting for 19.6 per cent (1,944 out of 9,908) of total such convicts, according to the NCRB publication.
 
Although jails in the country continue to be overcrowded, the occupancy rate has decreased from 117.4 per cent in 2014 to 114.4 per cent, this year. The maximum overcrowding was observed in jails in Dadra & Nagar Haveli (276.7 per cent), followed by Chhattisgarh (233.9 per cent), Delhi (226.9 per cent), Meghalaya (177.9 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (168.8 per cent) and Madhya Pradesh (139.8 per cent).
 
The report also states that 67 per cent of the jail inmates i.e. more than two third of the imprisoned are undertrials. This reiterates the concern expressed by the Chief Justice of India TS Thakur, who had recently slammed the central government for stalling the process of appointment of judges.
 
Some of the interesting highlights from the NCRB publication:

• The highest number of graduate (1,553) and post graduate (566) convicts were reported from Uttar Pradesh at the end of the year 2015.
• A total of 1,584 deaths in jails were reported (1,469 natural and 115 un-natural) during the year 2015.
• The highest gross earning by producing goods by inmates trained in various vocational programs was reported from Tamil Nadu followed by Delhi, Kerala, Bihar, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh during the year 2015.
• The prisons have a staff strength of 53,009 jail officials to take care of 4,19,623 inmates which amounts to 1 jail official per 8 inmates.

(In general, an ideal staff-to-inmate ratio should be 1:3 according the global norms.)

• A total of 26 incidents of jail break and 187 incidents of clashes/group clashes were reported during the year 2015 in which 9 inmates were killed and 201 inmates were injured in such clashes.

The post Over 55% of Undertrials are Muslims, Dalits or Tribes, says NCRB Prison Statistics Report appeared first on SabrangIndia.