Packed beyond capacity, prisons in India have got more crowded in 5 years

Nearly 80% of the inmates are undertrials; UP district jails have twice the numbers they were built for

Indian prisons were always known to be overcrowded. They have only got worse. Some prisons now house twice the number of inmates than they can accommodate.

The occupancy rate, or the prison population relative to its official capacity, has shot up in the last five years, shows data from the latest Prison Statistics India Report. Consequently, the expenditure on prison inmates has jumped by 42 per cent, from Rs 1,776 crore in 2018-19 to Rs 2,528 crore in 2022-23.

The average occupancy rate across jails overall has gone up from 117.6 per cent in calendar 2018 to 131.4 per cent in 2022. The conditions in the district jails are worse where the occupancy has jumped from 133 per cent to 156.5 per cent in the same period (chart 1).

Government data shows that the district jails of Uttar Pradesh are the most packed with the occupancy rate jumping to 207.6 per cent in 2022 from 183 per cent in 2018. Uttarakhand fares better, but only marginally (182.4 per cent), followed by West Bengal (181 per cent), Meghalaya (167.2 per cent), Madhya Pradesh (163 per cent), and Jammu and Kashmir (159 per cent) (chart 2).

Even as the number of prison inmates has increased by 23 per cent to 573,000 in these five years, the number of jails has reduced from 1,339 to 1,330. 

Only a fraction of the inmates are convicts. Three-fourths – or roughly eight in every 10 – are undertrials (chart 3). Of the Rs 2,528 crore that the governments collectively spent on inmates in 2022, Rs 1916.5 crore were on undertrials.

The government’s average expenditure per inmate, meanwhile, has increased from Rs 38,000 a year in 2018-19 to over Rs 44,129 (Rs 120 per day) in 2022-23. This is, however, less than the minimum amount needed to provide adequate nutrition to a person in South Asia. According to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World Report 2020, a person needs at least $2.12 per day (roughly Rs 176) for adequate nutrition and diet.

Twelve states have a higher prison budget than the national average in 2022-23. Andhra Pradesh leads, spending Rs 268,000 per inmate a year, while Haryana spends Rs 160,000 and Delhi Rs 149,000 (chart 4). Mizoram spends the least (Rs 2,000).

Also, though the prison budget has increased, 30 per cent of the sanctioned positions remain vacant.