#Prison Status of Indian Prisons: Indian prisons face thre | Judiciary UP

#Prison

Status of Indian Prisons:

Indian prisons face three long-standing structural constraints:

Overcrowding,

Understaffing and underfunding and

Violent clashes.

The Prison Statistics India 2016, published by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) in 2019 highlights the plight of prisoners in India.

Under-trial Population : India’s under-trial population remains among the highest in the world and more than half of all undertrials were detained for less than six months in 2016.

The report highlights that at the end of 2016, there were 4,33,033 people in prison, of whom 68% were undertrials.

This suggests that the high proportion of undertrials in the overall prison population may be the result of unnecessary arrests and ineffective legal aid during remand hearings.

People Held Under Preventive Detention: There is the rise in the number of people held under administrative (or ‘prevention’) detention laws in Jammu and Kashmir.

A 300% increase, with 431 detainees in 2016, compared to 90 in 2015.

Administrative, or ‘preventive’, detention is used by authorities to detain persons without charge or trial and circumvent regular criminal justice procedures.

Unawareness about Section 436A of C.R.P.C.: There is a gap between the number of prisoners eligible to be released and actually released, under Section 436A of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

In 2016, out of 1,557 undertrials found eligible for release under Section 436A, only 929 were released.

Unnatural Deaths in Prison: The number of “unnatural” deaths in prisons has doubled between 2015 and 2016, from 115 to 231.

Lack of Mental Health Professional: There was only one mental health professional for every 21,650 prisoners in 2016, with only six States and one Union Territory having psychologists /psychiatrists.

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