NEW DELHI: While Tamil Nadu and Karnataka showed the most improvements in prison administration since December 2019, Uttar Pradesh improved the least, according to a report.
The report said one in three staff positions were vacant in 2020 and there was one medical officer for every 613 inmates nationally.
The average amount spend per prisoner per day saw a fall of Rs 113, down from Rs 118, it said.
The India Justice Report (IJR) 2020 is based on publicly available data of different government entities on the four pillars of justice delivery police, judiciary, prisons, and legal aid.
"While most states have made at least some improvements in prison administration since December 2019. Tamil Nadu and Karnataka show the most improvements, with both improving on 12 out of 14 prison indicators. Uttar Pradesh improved the least," the report said.
On a national level, it said that access of prisoners to courts fell by 65 per cent, and to hospitals by 24 per cent, according to the Prison Statistics India (PSI) 2020, the latest official statistics on the state of India's prisons and their inmates, published in December 2021.
The PSI is periodically published by the National Crime Records Bureau, an entity of the Government of India.
PSI 2020 presents data from January 2020 to December 2020.
The analysis showed that prisoners' visits to courts came down nearly a third, from about 44.5 lakhs in 2019 to 15.5 lakhs in 2020.
"Impacted too was inmates' access to health services, with the number of visits, made by prisoners for medical attendance, declining from 4.77 lakh in 2019 to 3.63 lakh visits in 2020. Visits by medical personnel to prisons also reduced from 24,524 in 2019 to 20,871 in 2020, while visits by judicial officers nearly halved to 9,257 in 2020 from 16,178 in 2019," the report said.
The report further said that about nine lakh more arrests were made in 2020, and, taken at December 2020 in terms of absolute numbers, the prison population grew 1.5 per cent from 481,387 to 488,511 inmates.
"The annual increase is particularly worrying; given that 2020 was a Covid year when a slew of decongestion efforts were being implemented across the nation. However, the total number of people entering and leaving prisons in the course of the year fell from 19.02 lakhs in 2019 to 16.31 lakhs in 2020," it said.
As of December 2020, nationally, overcrowding stood at 18 per cent, a marginal reduction of two percentage points from the previous year, it said.
"This figure is the national average across 1,306 prisons. In nine states overcrowding rates are more than the national average," the report said.
Much of this overcrowding is accounted for by the presence of 'undertrials', whose share increased from 69 per cent in December 2019 to 76 per cent in December 2020, showing that for everyone convicted prisoner, there are three people in custody awaiting 'investigation, inquiry or trial'.
"This follows a long-term trend. Five years ago, in 2016, undertrials accounted for 68% of the prison population. As with all preceding years, a majority of prisoners come from amongst the poor and illiterate. Besides chronic overcrowding, other long-term comorbidities in the prison system have persisted and indeed worsened," it said.
Regarding the vacancies of prison staff, the report said that across the country and despite this period traversing a pandemic, the shortage of medical officers and staff continues, and in some states, their numbers have even gone down.
"Nationally, vacancies among medical staff and officers stand at about 33 per cent, which means one in every three posts has not been filled. There were 797 medical officers in the country's prisons to serve nearly 489,000 inmates. On average, this means each medical officer was looking after 613 inmates. However, the Model Prison Manual 2016 requires there to be one medical officer for every 300 inmates. The sanctioned strength in 17 states does not meet this criterion. Only 9 states have managed to reduce their medical officer vacancies," it said.
It further said that from January to December 2020, total deaths went from 1764 in the previous year to 1887.
The deaths remain categorised as 'natural', 'unnatural' and 'cause not known', and deaths related to Covid have not been disaggregated, it said.
"The average number of prisons equipped with a video conferencing facility rose from 60 per cent in 2019 to 69 per cent in 2020. 13 states/UTs had 100 per cent coverage across their prisons. In contrast, six states/UTs had less than half of their prisons equipped with this facility.
"Tamil Nadu, with 142 prisons, had only 10 per cent or 14 jails with a VC facility. None of Lakshadweep's 4 prisons had this facility available," the report said.
The report is an initiative of the Centre for Social Justice, Common Cause, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, DAKSH, TISS- Prayas, and Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, supported by Tata Trusts.