India's expenditure on prison inmates has increased by 24.3 per cent in the past five years: from Rs 1,694.32 crore in 2017 to Rs 2,106.86 crore in 2021, according to the latest Prison Statistics in India report.
The states with the highest annual expenditure per inmate in 2021 were Andhra Pradesh (Rs 2.1 lakh), Haryana (Rs 1.4 lakh) and Delhi (Rs 1.1 lakh). However, prison occupancy, too, increased to 130 per cent in 2021 from 115.1 per cent in 2017.
"The overcrowding shouldn't have increased since these were the Covid-affected years," said Valay Singh, project lead on the India Justice