Some excerpts, depicting the state of the prison system (and overall, of the criminal justice system) in India:
...The national average prison occupancy stands at a shocking 131%, and 176 prisons operate at 200% occupancy or more. Several prisons house four times their sanctioned capacity.
Even more troubling is the composition of the prison population: 76% are undertrials — individuals who have not yet been convicted but are imprisoned due to sluggish police investigations, delayed trials, or systemic barriers to bail. In 20 states and UTs, more than 20% of undertrials have been detained between one to three years, without being found guilty.
Period of Detention: On average undertrials are spending more time than ever before in pre-trial detention. At the end of 2022, 11,448 or 2.6 per cent had spent more than five years in pretrial detention. This is considerably higher than the 5,011 in 2019 and 2,028 in 2012. Worryingly, Uttar Pradesh alone accounted for nearly 40 per cent of the undertrials who had spent more than five years in detention.
A System Under Strain: India's police and prisons in crisis shows Indian Justice Report 2025 | SabrangIndia
With shocking shortfalls in staffing, training, diversity, and basic human rights, the report paints a damning picture of systemic collapse — calling for urgent reform to rescue India’s crumbling justice infrastructure
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