Editorial: Prison reforms overdue

There is a need for overhauling the jail administration, focusing on reformation and rehabilitation of inmates

Hyderabad: Overcrowding, understaffing and underfunding have been some of the major problems, apart from corruption, plaguing prisons in India. An excruciatingly slow judicial system, especially the lower courts where hundreds of thousands of cases continue to languish, and the constraints of State governments which control prisons, further add to the woes. Over the last several decades, a number of expert committees went into the issue of prison reforms and made wide ranging recommendations but the changes in prison administration have been anything but encouraging. A new draft model prison Act, circulated by the central government recently, attempts to tackle the legacy issues affecting the country’s jails and usher in positive changes. The draft proposes a raft of measures to break the nexus between criminals and corrupt officials. The contemporary prison administration is a legacy of colonial rule. The draft proposes to amend the Prisons Act of 1894 which had focused primarily on the enforcement of discipline with no regard to the reformation and rehabilitation of the offenders. There is a need for overhauling the jail administration, focusing on reformation and rehabilitation of inmates. Overcrowding has been one of the major problems, creating problems of hygiene, sanitation, management and discipline. The cramped conditions in jails militate against prisoners’ right to good health and dignity. According to the Prison Statistics India 2021, a report published by the Ministry of Home Affairs, between 2016-2021, the number of convicts in jails have decreased by 9.5% whereas the number of undertrial inmates has increased by 45.8%.

This clearly indicates a deeper problem with the country’s justice system. With three out of four prisoners being undertrials, the problem of overcrowding of prisons essentially boils down to how the undertrials are treated. Unfortunately, a majority of undertrials, languishing in jails for years, are so poor that they cannot afford to seek bail. The sub-human conditions in several prisons across the country often drive many undertrials to commit suicide. About 1,000 prisoners die in custody every year, with 90% of them being undertrials. The draft Act has proposed separate lodging for various categories of prisoners and attending to special needs of prisoners. Acknowledging the practical problems in building new prisons, the draft proposed that temporary facilities may be built for inmates whose numbers may be far greater than the prison capacity. The document also proposed that a prison’s institutional set-up should be decided in accordance with the inmate population and workload, showing a path to ensure that adequate personnel are available to staff a prison. Use of technology, including videoconferencing with courts, must be encouraged to bring transparency in prison administration. In 2018, the Supreme Court had set up a committee, headed by its retired judge Justice Amitava Roy, on prison reforms. It made certain recommendations covering overcrowding, speedy trials, increasing lawyer to prisoners ratio and introduction of special courts.

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