New Delhi: Meghalaya, which has the seventh lowest population in the country, now holds the dubious distinction of having the fourth most overcrowded prisons in the country, after Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
According to an analysis based on the National Crime Records Bureau’s Prison Statistics Report, 2019, released recently, the national capital (174.9 per cent) is one of eight states and union territories where prisons have occupancy of over 150 per cent, with the others being Uttar Pradesh (167.9 per cent), Uttarakhand (159 per cent), Meghalaya (157.4 per cent), Madhya Pradesh (155.3 per cent), Sikkim (153.8 per cent), Maharashtra (152.7 per cent) and Chhattisgarh (150.1 per cent).
Manipur has the worst undertrial-to-prison population ratio of 86.5 per cent, followed by Meghalaya (84.2 per cent), Jammu and Kashmir (83.2 per cent) and Delhi (82 per cent). Overall, between 2015 and 2019, Sikkim saw a jump of 59.4 per cent in prison population, while Jammu and Kashmir registered 57.6 per cent jump.
Thirteen states showed an increase in prison population, while only Nagaland and Andhra Pradesh showed a decline. Considering the population and size of the hill state, the number of cases in Meghalaya seems to be very alarming.
The analysis was part of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative’s ‘Ten Things You Should Know About Indian Prisons’ report which has been an annual feature since 2015.
India’s overall prisoner occupancy rate stood at 118.5 per cent in 2019, the highest since 2015, according to the report.
The analysis also said the prison population in the country has increased by 14.1 per cent in the last five years, while prison capacity has only increased 10.1 per cent. The percentage increase for undertrial prisoners is 17.16, while that for convicted prisoners is 7.4 per cent.
In 2019, the total number of women prisoners was 19,913, or 4.2 per cent of the total prison population. But the number of women staffs in prisons is 7,794, or 12.8 per cent of the total staff. Only 15 states/UTs have women’s prisons, with the highest number (seven) being in Rajasthan.
The CHRI analysis also dwelt on the education profile of the prisoners and found that one-third of them are illiterate, 41.6 per cent have not completed class 10, while 21.5 per cent have finished matriculation but not class 12. By the end of 2019, there were 4,78,600 prisoners in 1,350 prisons in the country of which 3,30,487 – or 69 per cent – were under-trial prisoners.