- The Supreme Court appointed Justice Amitava Roy (retd.) Committee has given recommendations to reform prisons in 2018.
- It is tasked to examine the various problems plaguing prisons in the country, from overcrowding to lack of legal advice to convicts to issues of remission and parole.
Findings of the committee
- Only jails in Goa, Delhi, and Puducherry allow female prisoners to meet their children without any bars or glass separation.
- Only 18% of female prisoners get exclusive women’s prison facilities.
- At the end of 2021, there were 22,918 women prisoners across India, accounting for 4.13% of the total number of inmates.
- Between 2014 and 2019, Indian prisons witnessed an increase in the population of female prisoners by 11.7%, and by 2019, women accounted for 4.2% of the total prison population.
- The report points out that only 18% of women prisoners are allotted exclusive women’s prison facilities.
- Only 15 states and UTs have functional women’s prisons.
- Suicide is a major cause of the 817 unnatural deaths reported in jails across the country between 2017 and 2021.
- Out of the 817 unnatural deaths, 660 were suicides with Uttar Pradesh recording the highest number of suicides at 101 during this period.
- Globally, one in three prisoners are undertrials.
- In India, three out of four, or about 77% of the total prison population in 2021, were undertrials.