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.