Decongesting Indian prisons

Govt comes up with a practical solution

The Union home ministry’s plan to launch a special scheme to offer financial support for poor under-trial prisoners who languish in jail for their inability to pay for bail is a practical step forward towards solving the vexed question of congested prisons by amending the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). The recently released India Justice Report said 77 per cent of the prison population were people awaiting the completion of investigation or trial. The absolute numbers, too, are shockingly large, having almost doubled from 240,000 in 2010 to 430,000 in 2021. The level of overcrowding can be gauged from the fact that Indian prisons have the capacity to house about 250,000 prisoners. The plight of under-trial prisoners waiting interminably for justice has been exercising the Government of India for many years without much progress for their relief.

In 2005, the government introduced by Ordinance Section 436-A in the CrPC, stipulating that under-trials (other than those who have committed offences attracting the death penalty) who had undergone detention for a period extending up to half the maximum period of imprisonment specified for that offence be released by the court on a personal bond with or without sureties. The problem, as the home ministry has rightly identified, is that most under-trials lacked the financial wherewithal to furnish personal bonds of any kind. No surprise, then, that little progress was made after this, so much so that in 2009, the Manmohan Singh government had mooted urgent steps to release under-trials whose period of detention could have overshot the sentence they would have served. Then Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan had also instructed chief judicial magistrates to ascertain the number of under-trials booked for petty offences and immediately release those who had served more than half their sentences on their personal bond. Here again, the question of financial capacity remained an impediment to decongestion.

In May last year, the Prime Minister came closer to identifying the key problem at a conference of chief justices and chief ministers where he pointed out that most of the under-trials were either “commoners or come from poor families”. The home ministry’s scheme, therefore, is clearly an extension of that thought and has been worked out, ministry officials said in discussion with all stakeholders. Though the idea is excellent, the risk, as with most plans, lies in execution, principally because the states will be responsible for its execution. The Centre will provide financial support to states to extend relief to prisoners who are unable to raise the money for bail or the requisite fines.

The states themselves have, however, scarcely been beacons of extending legal aid to the needy. The India Justice Report pointed out national per capita expenditure on legal aid by all states and Union Territories, including the National Legal Services Authority (NLSA), came to Rs 4.57 a year. Excluding the NLSA, the figure is Rs 3.87. Low budgets are one part of the problem. The other is the capacity to identify and process eligible prisoners. The Indian Justice Report had flagged personnel shortages across the board — from police, prison staff, and the judiciary — especially the lower judiciary. Taken together, these hurdles at state level run a good chance of stymieing a well-intentioned and progressive initiative.