The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) recently released the “Prison Statistics India 2017” report.
What are the highlights?
Prison deaths - The number of deaths in prisons has increased marginally from around 1,580 in 2015 to around 1,670 in 2017, with a surge of 5.49% during 2017.
The NCRB also found that there is a minuscule increase in deaths inside prisons in 2017 as compared to 2016.
Out of the 1,671 deaths in 2017, 1,494 were natural and 133 unnatural.
The number of unnatural deaths in prisons has increased by 15.7% from 115 in 2015 to 133 in 2017.
Among the 133, 109 inmates have committed suicide, 9 died in accidents, 5 were murdered and 5 died due to assault by outside elements.
For a total of 44 inmates’ deaths, the cause of death is yet to be known.
Escaped - A total of 371, 577 and 378 prisoners were reported as escaped from lawful custody during the years 2015, 2016 and 2017 respectively.
During 2017, 215 prisoners were reported as escaped from judicial custody.
Gujarat has reported escapee of 90 prisoners while they were outside prison premises followed by WB (11), and Bihar and Rajasthan (8) each.
Apart from escape from Judicial Custody, 163 prisoners escaped from Police Custody.
Highest of such escape from police custody was reported by UP (39) followed by Punjab (17) and Andhra Pradesh (15).
Other incidents - A total of 15 jail break incidents were reported in 2017 with 10 cases in West Bengal.
A total of 88 clash incidents inside jails were reported in 2017.
The highest of such clashes were reported by Bihar (35) followed by Delhi (19) and Punjab (11).
A total of 204 persons consisting of 181 prisoners and 23 jail officials got injured in such clashes and 1 prisoner died.
In 2017, no incident of firing was reported across the jails in the country.
Prisoners - The number of prisoners lodged in various jails has increased by 7.4% from 2015 to 2017.
In 2017, out of the around 4,50,700 prisoners, around 4,31,800 were male prisoners and 18,800 were female prisoners.
Out of the total prisoners, the convicts, undertrial inmates and detenues were reported to be comprising 30.9%, 68.5%, and 0.5% respectively.
Other prisoners accounted for 0.2% (693 prisoners) of total prisoners.
The number of convicted prisoners has increased by 3.7% from 2015 to 2017.
The highest number of convicted prisoners lodged in Central jails were recorded to be 66.3%, followed by district jails 27.9% and Open jails 2.4%.
Prisons - The total number of prisons at national level has decreased from 1,401 in 2015 to 1,361 in 2017, with a decrease of 2.85% during 2015-2017.
There are 1,361 prisons in the country - 666 Sub jails, 405 District jails, 142 Central jails, 64 Open jails, 41 Special jails, 22 Woman jails, 19 Borstal School (to reform young people) and 2 other jails.
The actual capacity of prisons has increased by 6.8% during 2015-2017.
